Leo Yankevich - The Birch

The Birch

The birch beneath

My windowsill

Stands like a wreath

In the silver chill

Of winter, white

In the faint glow

Of early light

And softest snow.

The birch still yields

Stars at this time,

Though over fields

Sun breaks through rime.

Dawn wakes the grounds

And sleeping ploughs,

But makes its rounds

Through silver boughs.

after the Russian of Sergei Yesenin (1895-1925)

translated by Leo Yankevich

first appeared in Trinacria

« Starless

December 1942 »

Leo Yankevich is among the greatest living poets in the English-speaking world, and Tikkum Olam is his most important collection of poems to date. Not only does he give voice to the 90 million martyrs to communism stuffed down the memory hole in the last 100 years, but he provides insight into the machinations taking place today that undermine Western man, and unmasks a sobering portent for the future, although not without offering an epilogue of courage and hope.

Hardcover: $25

Paperback: $16

E-book: $5.99

Available February 20, 2012

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Counter-Currents Publishing, Ltd.

“Leo Yankevich’s Tikkun Olam is both devastating and heroic. The poems devastate with their unflinching depiction of the horror of the last one hundred years—the murders, the political lies, the cultural debasement, the degradation of European identity—and at the same time they are heroic in their open accusation of the force that ultimately lies behind it all: the insidious, self-serving impulse to “mend the world” in accordance with an anti-Western agenda. Yankevich’s book is unsparing in its vividness, but difficult to put down. He bravely directs our gaze at the infection that is killing us, and he does not allow us the comfortable option of turning away in forgetfulness.”—Joseph S. Salemi, Editor, Trinacria

“Leo Yankevich has given us in this book poetry of astonishing range and power. From quiet, lyrical beginnings, showing great sensitivity to the natural world, he moves to the heartbreak and horror that devastated Europe in The Great War. Poetry has seldom been asked to do so much. This poetry does it magnificently.” —Richard Moore

“Leo Yankevich’s rich formalist poetry sings while it mourns. His poems bring us face to face with powerful and provocative images from more than one of those darkest of modern times–times when a terrible inhumanity was unleashed upon a culture, a folk, a Heimat. In tones both eloquent and raw, it asks of its readers no more and no less than what is regarded as the sacred duty of all those who survive: Remember. Do not let this be forgotten. This too happened. Yankevich, like Percy Shelley and Roy Campbell before him, is a courageously outspoken poet, and one who is destined to be remembered as an important classic long after his politically-correct contemporaries have forever fallen out of popular, and poetic, favor.”—Juleigh Howard-Hobson

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