Kyiv

Fly little bird fly, above its frost bitten tongue
and the swollen knees of the blood-stained river

Fly little bird fly, dove skinned in the coattails of war
bathing in the shrapnel of an ice-breaking moon

The orphan Bucha plucking a child’s bones
pink chestnuts from the scarped city walls

There broke the sky, when crabbed winter blooms in spring,
in the lurching butchered silence, flirting with frozen leaves
It learns to speak with its hands, scattering grain
in the lily of the night, a riotous Orange plundered

The white blossoms lynching the gospel of minstrels,
drowned sirens in the wounded chalice, fleeing the hilly air

How the Donbas bleeds in the flag fevered blue and summer yellow
begging the broken heart of the red famine,

Fly little bird fly, the barbarians are at the gate, tired she waits,
plant seeds in her hair, wild and blossoming like thunder

From the seed coat and embryo, the orchids birth wings,
by the candlewick of cluster bombs, ovaries and stamen, pollinating dust

Only the bruise of young boys, only old woman’s broken-backed hands
cleaving its ruin of ash cloth and urn, an effigy of uneven colour

Even this a miracle, pincers carving its many faces, painting the shorn skulls
below a black sun, the corpse of barnyard sky, that yet believes in magic

The bird masks of the lilac chants death to the invader,
bride of Ukraine rise up, and lift your leathered veil,

The last bell of lightning weeps, stirring the future pitted in ash
sacking the agony of gods that run through the streets

In the shivering tall stars, a tarnished fawning eye
goldbricking the rusted tongue of a Varangian Prince

A toothless hag of famine, the paper song of snipers in a sparrow’s eye
above the gray, grieves on the gallows step, needle pointing the wind

On Snake Island, only the dead sing of fish-monger’s wives
the rushnyk of the salt and bread of Slavic tribes

Wayward stars blind-folding the shores of the Dnipro
night shops at the edge of the Roman Empire,

Where the mother tongue kisses the father land
in the soft touch of the tethered lips of war, a new love arrives

As if the brave had died for just such a moment,
to close their eyes, something will be born, something moves,

And something ends a moment ago, fly little one, fly,
over the hillside of Saint Andrew, its purple lathered skein of time

Fly little bird, fly, heroine of one side of the water
fly home in that shoreless thin line of desert light

With your broken wings fly, below that pettish song
that owes no beginning or end, but sings

In the shallow graves, by the cliffs of Babyn Yar, naked as a lover
the same flat note, stillborn of still movement, a fleece of keening mothers

Destruction creating an everlasting Ode, calls out ‘Kyiv, arise’,
culls no anthem, thieves the body, a skyless night

In the wick of the lantern that lights up its blue-lipped shadow
the grief that gives birth to the same child,

On both sides of the battle, its Elysian field,
and the enemy a glorious sunset ablaze.