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# The boys are setting to work with the chainsaws again
- URL: https://www.merionwest.com/the-boys-are-setting-to-work-with-the-chainsaws-again/
- Published: 2026-09-25T13:10:24.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-25T13:10:24.000Z
- Description: Stephen Komarnyckyj
- Author: MW Editors
- Tags: Poetry, Arts

> You can watch them, bright orange helmets

> Yellow high vis jackets, and hear the machinery sing

> And see the weeping birches fall

> As the metal teeth tear through their silver skin

> 

> 

> And I watch from the layby where I pulled over

> And I think of Coleridge's woman

> Wailing somewhere for her demon lover

> Wailing in the lines of poetry forever,

> And how history can never separate love:

> 

> Though the weeping birches fall after each other,

> But pause for a moment before they fall,

> Balanced on the wound that cannot hold together,

> The emptiness of the human soul

> Toppling through broken altitudes of weather

> 

> Though rain, sun, snow can never make it whole.

### **Stephen Komarnyckyj runs** [**Kalyna Language Press**](https://glli-us.org/2018/01/12/publisher-spotlight-kalyna-press/?ref=merionwest.com)**, which publishes his own poetry and translations, and has taught at The Poetry School and translated a series of Ukrainian poets and their blogs for The Poetry School site under the title "**[**Stanzas for Ukraine**](https://poetryschool.com/category/stanzas-for-ukraine/?ref=merionwest.com)**."**