Don't be frightened

As we’re rounding the corner on four million refugees from the war in Ukraine—with another seven million people displaced (including nearly 100,000 forcibly transported to Russia by the invading forces), I’m thinking about the childhood experience. Damn, but we’ll be paying for Putin’s little adventure for generations.

Ukrainian mothers are escaping the war with nothing but their children—frightened, bewildered, uprooted. Mothers in the receiving countries are leaving strollers, baby buggies, toys, clothing and supplies for the refugees at entry points and train stations. The cost of war is not measured in blood and treasure alone; plush toys and prams left on a station platform mark a different price.

Today’s music is therefore a lullaby. I don’t know any Ukrainian ones; this is from Wales, “Suo Gân”, which features prominently in Stephen Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. The 1987 film tells the story of an English boy caught in the devastation of the Japanese invasion of China; separated from his parents, he spends four years in a POW camp. I wish a much shorter sentence for the millions of displaced Ukrainian children and their families.

Translated, the song goes:

Sleep my darling, on my bosom,
Harm will never come to you;
Mother's arms enfold you safely,
Mother's heart is ever true.
As you sleep there's naught to scare you,
Naught to wake you from your rest;
Close those eyelids, little angel,
Sleep upon your mother's breast.

Sleep, my darling, night is falling
Rest in slumber sound and deep;
I would know why you are smiling,
Smiling sweetly as you sleep!
Do you see the angels smiling
As they see your rosy rest,
So that you must smile an answer
As you slumber on my breast?

Don't be frightened, it's a leaflet
Tapping, tapping on the door;
Don't be frightened, 'twas a wavelet
Sighing, sighing on the shore.
Slumber, slumber, naught can hurt you,
Nothing bring you harm or fright;
Slumber, darling, smiling sweetly
At those angels robed in white

Here’s a Welsh boy soprano singing it:

You know what? This is for more than the Ukrainian children and mothers. It's for the Russian children who've lost their fathers (in their thousands over the course of a single month), and for the Russian children who are lost in Ukraine and wondering if they'll ever see their mothers again, and for the Russian mothers who will never hold their children to their breasts. 

All because of Putin's dream of being crowned Tsar Vladimir III.