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Monthly Verse

A Song of Exile

I

The River Begins as
A thread of water clinging
To sandstones and clay.
It burbles childishly,
Content to reflect
The sides of the gully,
Frolics down the altitude
Of moor into the valley
Water stained the colour
Of old blood, until at last
The trees smear themselves into place.
Snot coloured moss.
The Birch a smudge of chalk.
Javelins of Couch grass.
Over each weir
Its waters nervously simper,
Moving, yet motionless,
Perspex bells,
They chime
Into the waft of lace,
Foam of champagne.
Yet still
The river descends and falls
Towards the estuary,
A song line of DNA.

By Stephen Komarnyckyj

Stephen Komarnyckyj reads "A Song of Exile"

Fjords Reviews Artists - Steven Komarnyckyj 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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