Between Arrests Poem by Ilya Kaminsky

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.
A boy steals a pair of cordovan boots from an arrogant man in sunlight.
To speak and to say sunlight falling inside us, sunlight.
When they shot fifty women on Tedna St.,
A city stood up and told you what we know:
A child learns the world by putting it in his mouth,
A boy becomes a man and a man, earth.
Body, they blame you for all things and they
seek in the body what does not live in the body.