Twenty Twenty Two

 Twenty Twenty Two

Very few of us have ever really known a war.

We may have seen the flashes on our TV screens

And plotted an invasion on our phones

But sheltering in cupboards, windows shattering around us?

Ears ringing from the hiss of missiles raining from above?

 

When thinking of the billions there are upon this earth

The number of us who have lived and died through war is tiny.

But that is not to say their stories are irrelevant

“One death is a tragedy; a million, a statistic.”

If that’s the case, the fewer wars there are

The more tragic is the loss.

 

A six-year-old in Yemen lost her leg below the knee.

A mother in Aleppo holds her son’s still-warm, but lifeless, body.

The more we strive for peace, the more we should revere those

Who died for us; these final bloody battles before war comes to a close.

 

A century ago my family strolled through Lviv,

Odessa, Mariupol, without a thought of how

Wars unforeseen would drag and force their children

To another land. I watch the tears of distant

Second cousins and I realise that

I’m only not in their war thanks to ones that cam before.

 

And so we watch, and mourn, and count the dead

Not as statistics, but as reasons why

Each loss in war must resonate

More than it did before.