This Is What Madness Look Like Poem by Gert Strydom

'Everything is completely destroyed,
there is almost no life left
and thousands of their people were lost:
the whole land near Solidar is covered
with the corpses of the occupiers
and the scars of the strikes.
This is what madness looks like.'
Volodymyr Zelensky president of Ukraine

1
Of what has been a lovely town in ruins are buildings,
where people are of a once beautiful place bereft,
broken pieces of bricks, glass and furniture are left
among some destroyed and broken things,

while in a tree a lonely dove of love sings,
through a roof a Russian missile cleft,
as Russians gather possessions in trucks with theft,
forsaken a child's dress do to this place loneliness brings,

while over the farm-lands, the open space Russians lie,
like zombies forward others are driven,
do stumble over bodies and parts of limbs,
in a apocalyptic landscape where their people did die,
with no absolution for the atrocities of war given,
at a grave a new window sings one of the saddest hymns.

2
Without ammunition, commanders, water and food
some Russian soldiers stand with cigarettes smouldering,
they are almost in a joyful and careless mood,
are back-packs for stolen groceries shouldering,

they do into a shop walk and what they want take,
with weapons in their hands no one do them resist
although the owner of the store does a scene make,
that they hate them the attitude of the people insists

and they are ignored and cannot understand this
as they walk out and return to a very old BMP,
do not the curses, impressions in eyes and hatred miss,
where from a Russian mindset, a Z-mentality they see.

From occupied Pidhoridne they drive away,
on a somewhat chilly war-torn winter-day.


3
There is no understanding, even wild animals are destroyed:
bloody and broken is what is left of the land,
as if the most barbaric sub-humans were employed,
in a tale that is utter reality where heroes stand,

ready to make the ultimate kind of offering,
to a future, peace, love and life to guarantee,
against those that with oppression this disaster bring,
from this darkness any person wants to be free.

The howitzers constantly roar far past deafening,
rocket artillery leaves fire, scorching and smoke,
as almost unstoppable the enemy do more devastation bring
while the widow's song does protection invoke

and in this for a moment a man and a woman embrace,
before with blazing rifles they do the enemy face.

4
Where evil begets much more vile evil
a captured Russian officer is speechless and stunned;
a number of accusers do his gaze fill
and for torture, theft and rape he is shunned,

in shock as if in a nightmare he does deny,
are very scared of a swift kind of reckoning:
he notices the people that do the Russians defy,
to follow to him some soldiers are beckoning,

they look very normal to him but act without fear:
from a launcher a rocket-grenade whooshes away.
He is taken to the back of a military truck that is near,
do not know what to the accusers that follow him to say,

a boy is hooking the belt of an old machinegun
and this is not a life for a kid or anyone.
© Gert Strydom