Grief and ReLeaf

Spring is finally here--a pause for freshness before summer burns through.

I thought that I'd posted "The Trees" [below] by Philip Larkin every May, but checking my blog index, this is only the fifth time.
The poem is a nice blend of bitter––the greening of tree buds "is a kind of grief"––and bright: yet they seem to say, "begin afresh, afresh, afresh". I love that line.

I took this photo, below, when I was biking in a twee liberal enclave, where many houses fly Ukraine flags. This poster of Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky is popular around town, maybe especially in this kind of affluent neighborhood, where bakery-cafés offer fresh French bread, house-roasted coffee, and "handcrafted" ice cream.

I haven't followed the Ukraine War closely.
Putin is a Bad Guy! but there's some simplification, romanticization going on around me concerning the purity of plucky little Ukraine...
While this IN NO WAY means they deserve to be invaded, Ukrainians have not historically been heroes of humanity.
Well, who has? But let's not pretend.
It's complicated.

Similar, for instance to how some US states are rewriting our complicated history to smooth over race and slavery, in Ukraine, "rewritten school history ignored other ethnic groups that had been part of Ukraine’s history."
--"Babi Yar at 75: Filling in the Blanks in Ukrainian History", Wilson Center, Izabella Tabarovsky, 2016

And yet now, (French Jewish thinker) Bernard-Henri Lévy says,

"If there was ever a place, in this crazy war in front of Russian neo-fascism, barbarism, and terrorism, where one can hear the echo of the Jewish soul, it’s in Ukraine."
--"The Truth about Ukraine and the Jews", Time, Bernard-Henri Lévy, January 26, 2023

Huh.
So, I'm not judging, I don't know enough.
Ukraine is a victim of Russian aggression here, no doubt about that.
I'm just thinking there's a kind of Virtue Porn going on when we, here, sentimentalize distant wars with yard signs and flags rather than entering into the mucky and complicated situation right in our own backyards.

I mean, my God, the UNITED NATIONS (!) visited my/our city, Minneapolis, last week, one of six US cities, to investigate systemic racial injustice and police brutality.
(They came on the same day that former Minneapolis police officer Tou Thao was found guilty of aiding and abetting manslaughter​, for holding George Floyd down while Derek Chauvin murdered him three years ago, May 25, 2020). KSTP report.

I don't expect us to be heroes. I'm not one! But let's not be self-satisfied, let’s not mistake our grief for action.

___________________________

Oh, but the relief of spring! Grieve, grieve, and . . . begin again.

"The Trees", by Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again 
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.