The increasing reckless and diabolical nuclear sabre-rattling of Russia’s Vladimir Putin recently elicited an ominous warning to the world from Joe Biden, the U.S. president and de facto leader of the free world. Biden stated the following:
“I don’t think there’s any such thing as an ability to easily use a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”
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Biden’s alarming announcement, coupled with Putin’s slippery-slope, embarrassing routing on the battlefield by Ukraine, has sent world leaders, military experts and political pundits, into non-stop paralyzing paroxysms of fear, confusion and edginess.
I have opined in the past, in the Kyiv Post, concerning my perceptions of the snowball effect on Africa of Putin’s demented war on Ukraine. My reaction to Putin’s beyond-the-pale, nuclear-threat insanity, is to look at his actions, yet again, through an African lens with poetry.
Here is the result.
Elephants Trumpeting Peace
by Irene Fowler
Beloved and revered, gentle, peaceable giants
Tons of pleasing, amiable, grey hulk and bulk
Great wonders of the natural world
Magnificent, serene, unique, terrestrial ones.
**
The dignified, dutiful matriarch marshals her clan
Uplifted trunks smell the hot, arid, wilderness air
Prized, life-saving, waterholes sourced by impressive muscular snouts
Strong, confident, and loving, the ruler leads her parched kindred.
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**
Africa’s blood-orange, fiery sunset, ablaze
The stomping elephants raise high castles of red dust-clouds
Trekking as one, from grassy, rolling hills, descending
The dowager elephant ever protective, brooks no folly or dissent.
**
Arriving at their journey’s end to stake a place, at the refreshing oasis
A vital resource shared with zebras, hippos, warthogs, giraffes, monkeys, big cats et al.,
The gentle behemoths are no thuggish gangster-bullies
Thirst sated, bodies cooled, backsides turned politely; they take their leave.
**
Elephants; alert, loyal, guardian angels of the savannah
Mammoth, fan-shaped ears attuned to danger
Whilst trunks are quick to trumpet warnings
Wise, intelligent, gifted with retentive memories and alive to threats and consequences.
**
Gargantuan, sculpted and precious animate jewels
Exemplars of the potency of power, strength and peace
Elephants; giant, blessed tokens and heavenly sights
Message humanity
Might maketh not right!
©2022 by Irene Fowler
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