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Robert Lindner
In 1939, my parents and family were in Warsaw, Poland
When the bombs fell as the Luftwaffe attacked.
They ironically escaped to Lviv which was on the
Soviet side of the border between the Germans
And the Russian/Soviet forces when Poland was
Divided by a treaty between Stalin and Hitler.
It was called Lvov and was part of Poland then.
The Germans attacked in 1941 and they had to run
Again, They went east to Uzbekistan and when
The war ended came back to Poland and then went
To Salzburg, Austria where I was born in 1946.
The irony of them being refugees in Ukraine and
The current refugees from Ukraine going to Poland
Led to my my poem.
Ukraine, Ukraine, Runnin’ All ‘Round My Brain
Runnin’ all ‘round my brain,
The insane war by Russia on Ukraine,
Vladimir Putin’s war.
No one knows the wherefore
Of the mad dictator,
Though the psychologists try to explain
How dictators may find
Themselves in “the dictator trap.” A bind
That’s beyond the plan an
Authoritarian
Creates because they can
Never see beyond the lies in their mind.
Ukraine, Ukraine, runnin’ all ‘round my brain.
It’s twenty twenty-two,
In Ukraine, President Zelensky, who
Is a Jew, somehow was
Called a Nazi because
Putin was pulling straws
For his straw man to explain his war to
The soldiers, who would die
And kill and would not watch the mothers cry
For their poor dead children,
And other civilian
Deaths, as war came again
To Ukraine and I watched and wondered why.
Ukraine, Ukraine, runnin’ all ‘round my brain.
Where bombs and rockets fly.
It’s hard to see the reason why. I try,
But the world of today
Is clouded, like the way
Out of this war that they
Make with bombs falling from the Ukraine sky.
It recalls Warsaw in
1939 when bombs would begin
World War Two. My parents
Were there. So in a sense,
When they were immigrants,
So was I because I would not have been
Here, if they had not done
What they did. Run. First, they ran from the one
Place where refugees from
The war on Ukraine come
To, to the places some
Now must leave to escape the mad Russian.
Ukraine, Ukraine, runnin’ all ‘round my brain.
This war the Russians are
Making because their insane commissar
Has filled their minds with lies.
He’s “the Lord of the Flies,”
So they can’t hear the cries
Of the children dying. It is a scar
Upon the world, a crime,
On mankind. Though we keep hoping we can climb
Past human history.
Still the reality,
Is inhumanity.
With Evil rising from another time.
Ukraine, Ukraine, runnin’ all ‘round my brain.
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