Desolation as Emotion
“I feel such sadness, desolation”
- Ukrainian refugee
Desolation isn’t often used in English this way,
to describe a state of being, rather than physical space,
The Chagoseans called is Sadness
when their land was stolen
by the very same states that now for SOME REASON
do the right think for these Ukrainians.
Place your self in that decimated landscape;
in the real, the skeletons out your communities
behind closed eyes, unending desert, that open sea
the barron horizon where nothing rises, limbo where nothing ever comes to be.
Out in the atmosphere unmoored from everything
must in moments grip the whole, in shock, like lack of oxygen, like falling, like drowning.
This is “desolation”
translated from it’s use in Ukrainian.
the words’ author, who’s plight for some is exceptional
on the contrary describes the undeniably universal:
No sign of end to the war in sight
no sense of how far they will find themselves from home.
going away with no knowing how long
desolation -
felt in the aftermath of the end of their worlds.
Surely for all humans it is just the same
under any other storm of bombs
beyond the borders of Ukraine?
Out there, where atop that same desolation
the people feel the desertion of our nations.