A Song of Exile
I
To sandstones and clay.
It burbles childishly,
Content to reflect
The sides of the gully,
Of moor into the valley
Water stained the colour
Of old blood, until at last
Snot coloured moss.
The Birch a smudge of chalk.
Javelins of Couch grass.
Its waters nervously simper,
Moving, yet motionless,
Perspex bells,
Into the waft of lace,
Foam of champagne.
Yet still
Towards the estuary,
A song line of DNA.
By Stephen Komarnyckyj
Stephen Komarnyckyj reads "A Song of Exile"
Stephen Komarnyckyj
Stephen Komarnyckyj is a British-Ukrainian writer and linguist whose literary translations and poems have appeared in Poetry Salzburg Review, the influential poetry magazine based at the University of Salzburg, Vsesvit Magazine (Ukraine's most influential literary journal), The North, The Echo Room and Modern Poetry in Translation. He has been interviewed on Ukrainian television and by the Den (Day) newspaper, one of Ukraine's most important daily papers based in the capital, Kyiv, and campaigns to raise awareness of the genocide perpetrated by Stalin against the Ukrainian people and to improve the human rights situation in Ukraine. He is currently based in Huddersfield, a town that has been referred to as "the Poetry Capital" of the United Kingdom.
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