Ilya Kaminsky Poems

If I speak for the dead, I must leave
this animal of my body,
...

I kissed a woman
whose freckles
aroused our neighbors.
...

It is December 8 and my brother Tony was killed by the soldiers. December 8 and the police are reopening the Southern Trolleyways. December 8 when my wife lifts Tony's body from the ground,
...

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
...

Motionless forgetful music of women and men
touching each forehead, breathing a soul into each immeasurable other,
on earth where we are, stranger, through madness unattainable
or grace, in difficult traffic reaching for each immeasurable other:
...

Yet I am. I exists. I has
a body,
When I see
...

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
...

Don't forget this: Men who live in this time remember the price of each bottle of vodka. Sunlight on the canal outside the train-station. With the neighbor's ladder,
...

"You must speak not only of great devastation
but of women kissing in the yellow grass!"

I heard this not from a great philosopher
but from my brother Tony
...

Through Vasenka: a herd of boys runs. With their icy hands they haul a policeman and for an apple a look they display the man on the asphalt.
...