It’s not surprising there is some fatigue;

Far away lands of which we know not much

Soon regress once the novelty wears off

And the front page headlines have moved elsewhere.

 

There was that time, of course; Ukraine became

Everyone’s second-favourite country.

Top people swaggered in yellow and blue

And excited queues welcomed the displaced.

 

It couldn’t last. The hard men got to work

With their fake news and stories of excess,

And citizens ask why it takes so long

To get a proper victory to cheer.

 

The West echoes to plots of turned-off taps.

Consensus, perhaps never really there,

Will lie exposed as the sum of its parts,

If common sense flies too close to the sun.