jhaffur khan azad darakth (piano, bansuri, voice) and Joel Banner Baird (guitar) present: In pain with Ukraine

Incandescent lies light sky with ghostly flares

we used to just exclaim and call them shooting stars

Portents of dictatorships that still don’t seem to care

Fabricating claims of faded glory lost, re-booting wars.

Distant pain so much more easily deferred

Sanctioning a careful removal from the zones of harm

Collateral was the term euphemistically preferred

Let the tanks roll on, the distant glow won’t keep us warm.

Bizarrely the demented mind now holds the power

Sanity and humility crush with the weight of reason

Real people and their children currently cower

But the options are not clear in this false season.

What then of lines at borders all of us are crossing

What is the visa that redeems but won’t destroy us

Futures past and present bid us put peaceful cautions

Root causes and frontiers somehow let hate deploy us.

Moments of illumination clouded, too much feels the same

What inner forces can be mustered to give hope its fire

What shooting stars can turn the rockets anger into shame

What will replace this endless quest to claim what we desire.

jhaffur khan azad darakth - in pain with Ukraine, 2022