• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
The Friday Poem

The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

  • The Frip
  • About
    • Masthead
    • Contributors
  • FAQ
  • Archive
    • Search the archive
    • Friday Poems
    • Reviews
    • Features
  • Subscribe
  • Submit a poem

The Song of Siskin

Poets have always responded to war by writing poetry — it’s what we do. Following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24th February this year people started sending The Friday Poem their poems about the war — poems about resistance, poems of protest, and poems about specific individuals affected by the fighting. These are stories of courage, grief and hope. We decided to publish some every week as Friday Poems for Ukraine. Here’s ‘The Song of Siskin’ by Mark Russell. Slava Ukraini!

The Song of Siskin

On the day the Russian government try to tell us
That pictures of bound and executed civilians
Are faked by Ukraine to bolster world support,
Siskin return to my feeders in the front garden.

They feast loudly on the free Sonnenblumenkern.
A couple sit on the peanut tube that pine martens
Have hoisted up and onto the table in the night.
Chaffinch, nuthatch, great and blue tits join them.

When I stretch and scratch my scalp, they scatter 
Into the wind, all but one, a female, pale with dark
Streaks, but clearly sensible and the least gullible.
She sits and stares at me, as if I am a gigantic liar.

‘семян подсолнечника’ she sings. ‘Get it right,
Pronounce it right, semyan podsolnechnika’.

Mark Russell’s poems have appeared recently in Shearsman, The Rialto, Tears in the Fence, and Gutter. He lives in Scotland.

Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on Email

Read this next

Blue flag shape with a yellow circle in the centre, on the yellow circle "Poems for Ukraine" is written in black

Primary Colours – Twickenham Early Morning 

by Simon Rees-Roberts — one of our Poems for Ukraine

Site Footer

MENU

  • About us
  • FAQ
  • Submit a poem
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Mentions Légales
  • THE FRIP

    The Frip is The Friday Poem’s reviews and features magazine. We run book reviews, profiles, interviews, essays, lyric essays and other features of interest to poets and readers of poetry. Read the Frip here.

    NEWSLETTER

    Why not sign up for our weekly newsletter and never miss a Friday Poem again? Pop your email address in the box and click the button.

    Copyright © 2023 · The Friday Poem · All Rights Reserved · follow the Friday Poem on Twitter · follow the Friday Poem on Facebook