Ruined the Flowers - Pat Valdata

[Larry Robinson]

Ruined the Flowers
 
After a painting by Ukrainian artist Ivan Stepanovich Marchuk
 
This bowl doesn’t hold gooseberries,
only cracked eggshells. And this
Madonna wears a veil of twine and reeds.
She has made a bird’s nest of herself, but
there’s no safety in her cup of twigs. She weeps
brown tears for all her broken children.
 
She should be the patron saint of that
maternity hospital the Russians bombed.
She reminds us never to forget the blanket-covered
bodies. Yet another war, yet another power-mad
madman, the latest in the world’s long history of horror.
 
She is an Earth Mother, isn’t she, grieving not
only destroyed cities where women labor 
among the rubble and dead children rest uneasy
in mass graves, but also the fields of unplanted 
wheat, spring wildflowers crushed by tank treads, 
bumblebees and spiders waking from their winter sleep 
not to meadows and backyards, but to smoke and flames.
 
Weep for your daughters, oh Lady of the Broken Eggs.
Weep for the ruined flowers.
 
 	- Pat Valdata
 
 
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