Make no mistake, we are buoyed
by your heartfelt sympathy, knowing
it to be an expression of solidarity
with our people at a time when our
country, our nationhood, our freedom
is being brutally contested by an
opponent who, though declaring us to
be Slavic cousins does not hesitate to
unleash upon us its missiles and bombs
as an object lesson of reward for our
obdurate unwillingness to surrender
ourselves once again to the indignity
and humiliation of vacating liberty
and self respect to the demands of a
power, crazed with a vision of conquest.
Yet while empathy is a balm to our self
regard there is a certain whiff of sanctimony
when no other meaningful support in our
just cause is offered. Do you sympathize
with our millions who have fled this unequal
war, the children and women who have died
under brutal shelling of civilian areas, with
our children for whom cancer treatment has
been cancelled, the separation of families, the
wholesale destruction of our towns and cities?
Is fear of the snarling, fanged bear such that
no intervention it understands is forthcoming?
That we are left alone in our plight while from
afar admiration for the plucky, life-determined
people of Ukraine is the global talk of the town?
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