When breathless your lips
Were only a stumble away
Your eyes agog with wonder
Gazed into our baby's  eyes
And then you left to fight
The Russians.

She said: "Every life an enchantment 
A whisper of what love can do."
Destitute souls amended in blue.
I cannot forget the war or you.
Who wants to stop my baby breathing
For the sin of being born Ukrainian?

And all the birds will sing between
Bomb blasts but confidence declines.
There is a subdued mood in the cellars
The quiet and shushing shrinking mothers
Sheltering below where their men are not.
Only a few baby steps from what was.
The remains of sentences stuck in the throat.