Tag: ilya kaminsky

Poet is a voice, I say, like Icarus,
whispering to himself as he falls.

Yes, my life as a broken branch in the wind
hits the Northern ground.
I am writing now a history of snow,
the lamplight bathing the ships
that sail across the page.

I grow frightened that I haven’t lived, died, not enough
to scratch this ecstasy into vowels, hear
splashes of clear, biblical speech.

I read Plato, Augustine, the loneliness of their syllables
while Icarus keeps falling.
And I reach Akhmatova, her rich weight binds me to the earth,
the nut trees on a terrace breathing
the dry air, the daylight.

Yes, I lived.

*

Once or twice in his life, the man
is peeled like apples.

What’s left is a voice
that splits his being

down to the center

but there is joy of shape, there is
always
more than one silence.

*

I’ve loved, yes. Washed my hands. Spoke
of loyalty to the earth. Now death,
a loverboy, counts my fingers.

I escape and am caught, escape again
and am caught, escape

and am caught: in this song,
the singer is a clay figure,

the poetry is the self – I resist
the self. Elsewhere
St. Petersburg stands
like a lost youth

whose churches, ships, guillotines
accelerate our lives.