The gangster, ‘in Aleppo once’, reduced to dust
a place where there had been a city. Now he’s come
to try his hand on peaceful targets nearer home.

Our masters of diplomacy again: ‘We must
at all costs not provoke him to a wider war.
Supplying aeroplanes would be a bridge too far.’

The wider war put off until another day,
the gambler gangster’s luck is in, and ‘Bombs away!’,
mass murder drops unchallenged from an open sky.
‘Stand by Ukraine!’’s a tired chorus. We stand by.