A Poem Of Exile

I count in prison the days and nights And then forget the count. How heavily, Oh Lord, Do these days pass! And the years flow after them, Quietly they flow, Bearing with them Good and ill. Everything do they gather Never do they return. You need not plead, Your prayers unanswered fall. Mid oozy swamps among the weeds Year after weary year has sadly flowed. Much of something have they taken From dark store-house of my heart; Borne it quietly to the sea, As quietly the sea swallowed it. Not gold and silver Did they take from me, But good years of mine Freighted with loneliness, Sorrows written on the heart With unseen pen. And a fourth year passes So gently, so slowly, The fourth book of my imprisonment I start to stitch up, Embroidering it with tears Of homesickness in a foreign land. Yet such woe tells itself not in words. Never, never in the wide world. In far away captivity There are no words Not even tears, Just nothingness; Not even God above thee, Nothing is there to see, None with whom to speak, Not even desire for life. Yet thou must live! I must! I must! But for what? That I may not lose my soul? My soul is not worth such suffering! Then why must I live on in the world, Drag these fetters in my jail? Because, perchance, my own Ukraine I shall see again. Again I shall pour out my words of sorrow To the green groves and rich meadows. No family have I of my own in all Ukraine, Yet the people there are different from these foreigners I would walk again among the bright villages On the Dnieper’s banks and sing my thoughts gentle and sad. Grant me, Oh God of mercy That I may live to see again Those green meadows, those ancestral tombs. If Thou wilt not grant this, Yet bear my tears To my Ukraine. Because, God, I die for her. It may be that I shall lie more lightly in foreign soil When sometimes in Ukraine they speak of my memory. Carry my tears then Oh God of loving kindness, Or at least send hope into my soul. I can think no more with my poor head, For coldness of death comes on me When I think that they may bury me in foreign soil And bury my thoughts with me And none tell about me in the Ukraine.

And yet it may be that gently through the years My tear-embroidered songs shall fly sometime And fall as dew upon the ground On the tender heart of youth, And youth shall nod assent. And weep for me Making mention of me in its prayers. Well, as it will be so it will be. Perhaps ’twill swim Perhaps ’twill wade Yet even if they crucify me for it I’ll still write my verses.