Étude

and we try to see Irina, in Kyiv,

playing Chopin on an ash-covered piano
in the bombed-out debris of her house.

What do we see? What does it mean?
What epiphany under that apocalypse?
What imagination confronts unreasoning tyranny

with defiant chords?

Over the darkened streets, shrieking fire –
shattered window-glass underfoot,
...