Ukraine's President Zelenskyy addresses Congress

 

Click the picture to hear Zelenskyy's entire speech (and the pageantry before and after.)

The speech before a joint meeting of the American Congress by President Zelenskyy was magnificent. If you haven't heard it listen now. 

PTSW: Take Only What Is Most Important

 Serhiy Zhardan is a contemporary Ukrainian poet, artist, performer. The poem below is from a collection called "What We Live For, What we Die For", published in 2017. Zhardan is in his late forties and is from wartorn eastern Ukraine. The poem was translated from Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps,

Take Only What Is Most Important

Take only what is most important. Take the letters.

Take only what you can carry.

Take the icons and the embroidery, take the silver,

Take the wooden crucifix and the golden replicas.

Take some bread, the vegetables from the garden, then leave.

We will never return again.

We will never see our city again.

Take the letters, all of them, every last piece of bad news.

We will never see our corner store again.

We will never drink from that dry well again.

We will never see familiar faces again.

We are refugees. We’ll run all night.

We will run past fields of sunflowers.

We will run from dogs, rest with cows.

We’ll scoop up water with our bare hands,

sit waiting in camps, annoying the dragons of war.

You will not return and friends will never come back.

There will be no smoky kitchens, no usual jobs,

There will be no dreamy lights in sleepy towns,

no green valleys, no suburban wastelands.

The sun will be a smudge on the window of a cheap train,

rushing past cholera pits covered with lime.

There will be blood on women’s heels,

tired guards on borderlands covered with snow,

a postman with empty bags shot down,

a priest with a hapless smile hung by his ribs,

the quiet of a cemetery, the noise of a command post,

and unedited lists of the dead,

so long that there won’t be enough time

to check them for your own name.

Gleaning Facebook: Remember

 I hope the American people will remember these 31 Senators when they come up for a vote again. If there was ever a time when Americans should unite behind our president it is now. There is a worldwide movement against republicanism. What a shame that the party of Lincoln, that actually calls itself "Republican," has so many who have rejected republican principles and some even oppose supporting the battle against the evil Mr. Putin.

Gleaning Facebook: "What does it mean for us, freedom?"

"What does it mean for us, freedom?"

The young Mr. Zalenskyy may not have the eloquence (in English anyway) of a Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln, but he has a brave heart for liberty. I am so glad we now have a President of the United States who also loves liberty and who will do all that is reasonable to help Ukraine.

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Thank you President Zelenskyy for your courage and your example. May God protect you and give you victory over evil. And thank you President Biden for your quiet and effective diplomacy that has united the entire free world to rebuild alliances and stand up to tyranny.

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If I have to pay ten dollars a gallon for gasoline to save western democracy, it will be a small price.

Comments:

Howard Smith I 100% agree.

Luis Schnitzer Da Silva Yes indeed.

Marsha Yancey Atkins Agree!

Melanie Knauff Amen and we’ll stated

Terrell Shaw Melanie Knauff Y'all have fun on your trip!

Marlene Williams Millard Freedom is everything

Katie S. Kimbrough Well said!

Carolyn Koblis I hope all people recognize we have a President now who respects democracy and does not step all over the constitution as the previous president did. Freedom for all!