Ilya Kaminsky Poems

To your voice, a mysterious virtue,
to the 53 bones of one foot, the four dimensions of breathing,
...

And when they bombed other people's houses, we

protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
...

[an elegy for Osip Mandelstam]
[A modern Orpheus: sent to hell, he never returned, while his widow searched across one sixth of the earth's surface, clutching the saucepan with his songs rolled up inside,
...

In plain speech, for the sweetness
between the lines is no longer important,
what you call immigration I call suicide.
I am sending, behind the punctuation,
...

1.

Such is the story made of stubbornness and a little air,
a story sung by those who danced before the Lord in quiet.
Who whirled and leapt. Giving voice to consonants that rise
...

That was the morning strange helicopters circled.
That was the morning we damned only the earth.
We saw a soldier aim and the deaf boy Petya took iron and fire in his mouth.
His father
...

Momma Galya Armolinskaya, 63, is having more sex than you and I.
When she walks across her balcony

and the soldier "Oh" stands up
...

On the balconies, sunlight, on poplars, sunlight, on our lips.
Today no one is shooting, there is just sunlight and sunlight.
A girl cuts her hair with imaginary scissors—
The scissors in sunlight, her hair in sunlight.
...

I kissed a woman
whose freckles
arouse the neighbors.
...

To live is to love, a great book commands.
But such love is not enough!

The heart needs a little foolishness!
so I fold the newspaper, make a hat.
...