The ROAD TO KYIV

 

Across the steppes they journey,

Through war, and toil, and sweat.

They kill, they lust, they perish,

A Russian Cataphract.

 

On distant shores,

In cerulean skies,

The burning lust

of wanton lies,

 

Set the one against the other,

To murder those

they once

Called brother.

 

For Rape and Death

Is their legacy.

Their conscience devoid

of simple charity.

 

They plunder, they sin,

Never counting the cost

Of the countries they’ve killed,

Or the men that they’ve lost.

 

They slander, and slaughter

For pecuniary gain,

Leaving the poor to suffer

And die broken, in pain.

 

And the men that return

Fragile souls they have flayed,

Cry out for some succour

In their nights like a shade.

 

“We are damned, we are lost,

Hear us," they cry.

And the night closes in;

And the men start to die,

 

Once more in their dreams

The gore thick on their hands,

Of all the mother’s children they’ve killed

In Ukraine’s sun uplit lands...