After Pablo Picasso received word that Nazi dive bombers, flying on behalf of Franco’s Nationalist forces, had destroyed a city in the Basque country of his native Spain, he was inspired to memorialize the devastation.
The result, a huge mural on canvas, would become a commemoration of the horror of modern warfare.
He called his work, “Guernica.”
Today we see the equivalent of Guernica live on round the clock news.
Images of roads pitted with craters.
Bridges ripped in half.
Buildings crumbling in two.
And everywhere people scurrying.
The lucky ones, that is.
Too often we see the detritus of missiles and bombs.
Not dropped errantly, but purposefully.
By forces possessed by hell-knows-what.
Bodies and scattered like broken dolls
Cluttering the streets and sidewalks
That only weeks ago were bustling with life.
Today they are spattered with blood.
And haunted now.
We see packed trains headed West to safety.
Crammed with old people.
Who have known war and likely thought they would never see it again.
Young women, mothers mostly, holding a child or two,
Shepherding others.
Weighted by what they could carry in a suitcase.
Or maybe a shopping bag.
Interviews with refugees.
Now sheltered across the borders.
In Poland they are greeted with
Water, food, and toiletries.
Poles, whose people have known centuries of war,
Take the newest refugees to their hearts.
And into their homes.
The men remain home.
To fight.
Rallying to the cry of Glory to Ukraine.
Outmanned. Outgunned.
Not outfought. Or outbraved.
The image that sticks is the video of a young boy.
Maybe six years old. Walking alone.
Crying, crying, crying.
Overcome by the moment.
Sent ahead into a foreign country.
He is walking to safety.
A word meaningless to him.
Alone and crying.
A metaphor for a nation savaged by war.
Walking, for the moment, alone.
Note: Reuters reported that the boy’s mother was in a group just behind the little boy so presumably the two were reunited.
First posted in March 2022