Ilya Kaminsky

Running down Vasenka street my clothes in a pillowcase
I was looking for a man who looks exactly like me
so I could give him my Sonya, my name, my clothes.
Running down Vasenka street with my lips moving,
on e of those who run from the trolley that bursts like an intestine in the sun,
those who lock the door lock it with the second key,
and those who try to speak, stutter.
A wife screams as if she were in labor & she was in labor.
Running by windows where women bought lemon and fish and garlic,
to the right madame Gornik painted icons sold at morning,
to the left lived Veronina, mother of two boys
who stole tomato sandwiches from her boys.
We stuttered and drank and laughed like barefoot peasants
and also drank quietly, damning only the earth and quietly
made vodka from cherries, made vodka from wooden chairs.
It has begun: they climb the trolleys
at the thief market, breaking
all their moments in half. And the army officers
in the clanging trolleys shoot at our neighbors’ faces
and in their ears. And the army officer says: Boys! Girls!
take your partner two steps. Shoot.
It has begun: I saw how the blue canary of my country
picks breadcrumbs from each soldier’s hair
picks breadcrumbs from each soldier’s eyes.
Rain leaves the earth and falls straight up as it should.
To have a country, so important to run into walls, into streetlights, into loved ones, as one should.
Watch their legs as they run and fall.
I have seen the blue canary of my country
watch their legs as they run and fall.

Each man has a quiet that revolves
around him as he beats his head against the earth. But I am laughing
hard and furious. I pour a glass of pepper vodka
and toast the bare wall. I say we were
never silent. We read each other’s lips and said
one word four times. And laughed four times
in loving repetition. We read each other’s lips to uncover
the poverty of laughter. Touch the asphalt with fingers to hear the cool earth of Vasenka
Deposit ears into the raindrops on a fisherman’s tobacco hair.
And whoever listens to me: being
there, and not being, lost and found
and lost again: Thank you for the feather on my tongue,
thank you for our argument that ends,
thank you for my deafness, Lord, such fire
from a match you never lit.

As our neighbor Veronina walked across
her balcony one of the soldiers
said oh and stood and
another stood and the whole battalion
Veronina’s son collected
silver coins with the president’s profile
and she watched
hours pass from bombs in the public garden to bombs
on the theater balcony. Then what, to olive trees?
Hours pass
She understood it better than I did.
Hours pass
from olive tree to olive tree.
And Veronina touched
her son’s hair & said it better than I can
our kind prostitute from
apartment 8b, you are not
going to cry about it not in front of them.
We let them take her, all of us cowards,
what we did not say we carried in our suitcases, our coat-pockets, our nostrils.
They took you, Veronina.
And I see myself— a man’s hand writes on the white brick wall
of an apartment building “People
live Here” like an illiterate signing
a document
he does not understand.

…Inhabitant of earth for forty-something years
I once found myself in a silent country
where human beings move, but how differently they move!
I do not know what silence is, mine or
not mine, this country speaks to me.
I am seated before an enormous typewriter. Outside—
a street café, the customers drink lemon vodka,
throw their cups in the air,
they speak of gratitude, the music
we touch in ourselves. If they have nothing else, silence
is their music. And here I stand, a fool in an old-fashioned hat,
I have earned the laborious right
to love my country: yes, I stop and stare
as the wonder of the sun occurs—
pigeons rise over churches, the opera theater.
How bright the sky is, as the avenue spins on its axis,
how bright the sky is (forgive me Lord) how bright.

To live, as the great book commands,
is to love. Such love is not enough! –
the heart needs a little foolishness!
So I fold the newspaper, make a hat.
I pretend to Sonya that I am the greatest poet
and she pretends to believe it—
my Sonya, her stories and her beautiful legs
her stories and legs that open other stories!
And I say: a human being
understands the universe: its music
makes us foolish. I see myself: a yellow raincoat,
a sandwich, a piece of tomato between my teeth.
I raise my infant daughter to the sky—
I am singing as she pisses
(Old fool, my wife laughs)
on my forehead and my shoulders!

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed our country
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.