They were ordinary people:
teachers, doctors, lawyers, carpenters
brought to the Lebensraum in the East
to shoot men, women and children too.
Most were not psychopaths
but cogs in a malevolent machine
with the banality of evil shown
as the angels watched with tears dripping down.
They killed with as little compassion as boys
whose feet crunch ants on a summer's day.
Yet these same men would hug their children
and tenderly caress their loving wives.
I wonder if ghosts from these killing fields
haunt in the star-flickering Ukrainian night?
We have not learnt the lessons so that still
much innocent blood continues to spill.
teachers, doctors, lawyers, carpenters
brought to the Lebensraum in the East
to shoot men, women and children too.
Most were not psychopaths
but cogs in a malevolent machine
with the banality of evil shown
as the angels watched with tears dripping down.
They killed with as little compassion as boys
whose feet crunch ants on a summer's day.
Yet these same men would hug their children
and tenderly caress their loving wives.
I wonder if ghosts from these killing fields
haunt in the star-flickering Ukrainian night?
We have not learnt the lessons so that still
much innocent blood continues to spill.
