The countries of Europe, it is said,
stumbled into World War I, a war
no one wanted and yet, and yet…it happened.
After Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination,
it became the Great War, taking the lives
of a generation of young men too eager to fight
in the battlefield trenches.
What can we say about the confrontation
of great powers, going on at this very moment,
in Ukraine? Could the leaders of these countries
be stumbling again, this time on a powder
keg of nuclear alliance, misunderstandings,
irrationality, false promises, political realities
and unrealities, indignation and, above all,
bravado, as always, bravado for God and country?
David Krieger
March 2014
This poem was originally published by Truthout.
