Ilya Kaminsky Quotes

At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?

But in the secret history of anger--one man's silence / lives in the bodies of others.

You can fuck anyone—but with whom can you sit in water?

One would think of a boy laying syllables with his tongue onto a woman’s skin: those are lines sewn entirely of silence.

Question What is a child? A quiet between two bombardments.

The deaf don't believe in silence. Silence is the invention of the hearing.

Lord, such fire from a match you never lit.

I do not hear gunshots, but watch birds splash over the backyards of the suburbs. How bright is the sky as the avenue spins on its axis. How bright is the sky (forgive me) how bright.

The body of the boy lies on the asphalt like a paperclip. The body of the boy lies on the asphalt like the body of a boy.

Author's Prayer If I speak for the dead, I must leave this animal of my body, I must write the same poem over and over for the empty page is a white flag of their surrender. If I speak of them, I must walk on the edge of myself, I must live as a blind man who runs through the rooms without touching the furniture. Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking "What year is it?" I can dance in my sleep and laugh in front of the mirror. Even sleep is a prayer, Lord, I will praise your madness, and in a language not mine, speak of music that wakes us, music in which we move. For whatever I say is a kind of petition and the darkest days must I praise.

And when they bombed other people's houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisble house by invisble house -- I tooka a chair outside and watched the sun. In the sixth month of a disastrous reignin the house of money in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us) lived happily during the war.

I will praise your madness, and in a language not mine, speak of music that wakes us, music in which we move. For whatever I say is a kind of petition, and the darkest days must I praise.

What is silence? Something of the sky in us.

At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?

All that is musical in us is memory.

It was August. August! The light in the trees, full of fury.

It was April. The sun washed the balconies, April.

Today I have to screw on the expression of a person thought I am at most an animal and the animal I am spirals

Be courageous, we say, but no one is courageous, as a sound we do not hear lifts the birds off the water.

Watch, God— deaf have something to tell that not even they can hear.

You are alive, I whisper to myself, therefore something in you listens.

I believe that no great lyric poet ever speaks in the so-called “proper” language of his or her time. Emily Dickinson didn’t write in “proper” English grammar but in slant music of fragmentary perception. Half a world and half a century away, Cesar Vallejo placed three dots in the middle of the line, as if language itself were not enough, as if the poet’s voice needed to leap from one image to another, to make—to use Eliot’s phrase—a raid on the inarticulate. Paul Celan wrote to his wife from Germany, where he briefly visited from his voluntary exile in France: “The language with which I make my poems has nothing to do with one spoken here, or anywhere.

And when they bombed other people's houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisble house by invisble house -- I took a a chair outside and watched the sun. In the sixth month of a disastrous reign in the house of money in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us) lived happily during the war.

She scrubs me until I spit soapy water. Pig, she smiles. A man should smell better than his country— such is the silence of a woman who speaks against silence, knowing silence moves us to speak. She throws my shoes and glasses in the air, I am of deaf people and I have no country but a bathtub and an infant and a marriage bed! Soaping together is sacred to us. Washing each other’s shoulders. You can fuck anyone—but with whom can you sit in water?

You step out of the shower and the entire nation calms— a drop of lemon-egg shampoo, you smell like bees, a brief kiss, I don’t know anything about you—except the spray of freckles on your shoulders! which makes me feel so thrillingly alone. I stand on earth in my pajamas, penis sticking out— for years in your direction.

Deafness is suspended above blue tin roofs and copper eaves; deafness feeds on birches, light posts, hospital roofs, bells; deafness rests in our men's chests.

I am your boy drowning in this country, who doesn’t know the word for drowning and yells I am diving for the last time!

Erase everything you have written, Mandelstam says, but keep the notes in the margin.

Observe this moment -how it convulses- The body of the boy lies on the asphalt like a paperclip. The body of the boy lies on the asphalt like the body of a boy.

Time, my twin, take me by the hand through the streets of your city; my days, your pigeons, are fighting for crumbs—

A Ballad of Going Down to the Store First I went down to the street by means of the stairs, just imagine it, by means of the stairs. Then people known to people unknown passed me by and I passed them by. Regret that you did not see how people walk, regret! I entered a complete store: lamps of glass were glowing. I saw somebody - he sat down - and what did I hear? what did I hear? rustling of bags and human talk. And indeed, indeed, I returned. --Miron Bialoszewski (Poland, 1922-1983)

I am reading aloud the book of my life on earth and I confess, I loved grapefruit. In a kitchen: sausages; tasting vodka. I dip my finger into sweetness, I carry her revelations in my palms— And we speak of everything that does not come true which is to say: it was August. August! the light in the trees, full of fury. August filling hands with language that tastes like smoke. Now, memory, pour some beer, salt the rim of the glass; you, who are writing me, have what you want: a golden coin, my tongue to put it under. Greatest Hits (2002)

Then my mother begins to dance, re-arranging this dream. Her love is difficult; loving her is simple as putting raspberries in my mouth. On my brother’s head: not a single gray hair, he is singing to his twelve-month-old son. And my father is singing to his six-year-old silence. This is how we live on earth, a flock of sparrows. The darkness, a magician, finds quarters behind our ears. We don't know what life is, who makes it, the reality is thick with longing. We put it up to our lips and drink.

Envoi You will die on a boat from Yalta to Odessa. —a fortune teller, 1992 What ties me to this earth? In Massachusetts, the birds force themselves into my lines— the sea repeats itself, repeats, repeats. I bless the boat from Yalta to Odessa and bless each passenger, his bones, his genitals, bless the sky inside his body, the sky my medicine, the sky my country. I bless the continent of gulls, the argument of their order. The wind, my master insists on the joy of poplars, swallows,— bless one woman’s brows, her lips and their salt, bless the roundness of her shoulder. Her face, a lantern by which I live my life. You can find us, Lord, she is a woman dancing with her eyes closed and I am a man arguing with this woman

In these avenues, deafness is our only barricade.

Deafness isn't an illness! It's a sexual position!

Yes we lived. We lived, yes, don't say it was a dream/

A man should smell better than his country

There are two kinds of obscurity; one arises from a lack of feelings and thoughts, which have been replaced by words; the other from an abundance of feelings and thoughts, and the inadequacy of words to express them.

I Ask That I Do Not Die —but if I do I want an open coffin I am an American poet and therefore open for business Owls peck the windows of the 21st century as if looking for the board members of Exxon Mobil who who who who who Listen my beloved nothings your seriousness will kill you! But before you die my doctors have prescribed happiness God is a warm brick or a claw or the silence that survives empires An old woman in the rain with a pot of mushroom soup is one of God’s disguises. Her dog lifts its leg another one of God’s shenanigans and pushes its nose into morning’s ribcage I point my hand God this and God that and when God has nothing I still have my hairy hand for a pillow Put me in an open box so when God reaches inside my holes I can still see how a taxi makes a city more a city slippers on my feet, and only half covered by a sheet, in a yellow taxi so as not to seem laid out in state but in transit