written on the eve of the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine
my Kyiv friends and I
tiptoe around the jagged edge
of sorrow
at last the silence
envelopes each of us
FYI: For more, see Special Feature: "Selected Poems for the Second Anniversary of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine"
And LA Progressive, March 7, 2023: Don’t Forget the Private Sorrows of Ukraine
When we consider how important our own sorrows are to each of us, we should pause longer to reflect on all the deaths, maiming, and other tragedies that wars inflict.
The best quote I’ve discovered about war is from Ian McEwan’s novel Black Dogs (1993). His main character reacts to World War II in Europe:
He was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust…For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories.
