Psalm XXXI

Julia Fiedorczuk

translated by Bill Johnston

for R. K.

a chickadee had perched on the windowsill like a message

generated by the mist, October

was turning into November in the birches oaks alders,

in the frost-resistant flowers, in the cemeteries

where our fathers wrote no memoirs,

where they would not recognize our children, our

poems, ourselves. The television was showing Poland

that had perished, and then had not perished, and then

again had perished, and then not, and then the sun

flung up a mesh of branches, all at once

the chickadee was absorbed by sky before I could say

remember, remember me—

fiedorczukPsalm3.jpg

Julia Fiedorczuk is a writer, poet, translator, researcher, practitioner of ecocriticism, and founder of the School of Ecopoetics program. Read more.


Previously published in Oxygen (2017, Zephyr Press) and reprinted by permission of the author.

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