Ilya Kaminsky Poems

I am not a poet, Sonya I inspect
the fragrant feet of younger ladies—

While deafness hums as a little motor
I watch her stand in the shower
...

I remember Tony arguing in front of his mirrors, the soldiers
were painting the trees, Tony sat

on the floor of white hair, and all the trees were
...

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.
...

Dr. Alfonso Barabinsky wants
to go outside
I hold him down with my smaller body.
He walks, runs from his shoes to my kitchen.
...

I watch loud animal bones in their faces & I can smell the earth.
Our boys want a public killing in a sunlit piazza
They drag a young policeman, a sign in his arms swaying
...

Love cities, this is what my brother taught me
as he cut soldiers' hair, then tidied tomatoes
watching Sonya and I dance on a soapy floor—
I open the window, say in a low voice, my brother.
...

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,
...