Slava Ukraini!

Sometimes there are no words.

I have felt heartsick at the images of atrocities in Ukraine. People deserve to be safe and live their lives. It is not too much to ask, and yet it somehow it has become so. The world watches the horrors unfold and weeps.

I could not find words that would adequately express the times we are in, but the poem by William Ernest Henley came to mind and reminded me of the spirit and resilience of people who are fiercely resisting tyranny and defending themselves. We see it in Ukraine, and we see it in so many places of the world.

Invictus 

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoningsof chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley*

*Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51642/invictus