Pripyat Sleeps

PripPripyat sleeps as an urban tomb of concrete shells,
the Ukraine city that was hearth of workers dreams,
now abandoned and dead,
condemned as radioactive wasteland
with Chernobyl’s remains its silent lethal neighbor.

What desires and joy were sacrificed
for the lust of rubles over the nuclear safety’s reason,
haste and money the passionate sirens
seducing minds to ignore their logic and health.

Secretly the sin went unnoticed,
days elapsed into years
vows spoken in such ardor
that someday the absent safeguards would be fixed.

Alas, time was the assassin
of those fatal flaws,
fires and explosions expressing the truth.

Radiation spewing its deadly smoke
over so many lives,
suffering spread in infectious devastation,
the atomic plague claiming so many victims

Entombed now is the folly of impatience,
wind the only citizen left to dwell
where life can’t thrive or survive.

It is the testimony to the mar of greed,
that rationale valuing gold over humanity,
whose wake will always scar the world,
in remembrances of shame.