Ilya Kaminsky

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.
The voice I do not hear when I speak to myself is the clearest voice.
But the sky was all around us once.
We played chess with empty matchboxes,
he wrote love letters to my wife
and ran outside and ran back, yelling to her, “You! Mail has arrived!”
Brother of a waltzing husband, barber of a waltzing wife

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:

no one on earth (O bitterness, O desire, — who commands the ships? —
or, who — ) touching the Lord’ s shoulder, and breathing a soul, has measured

this motionless forgetful music of women and men. Thus
I (behind the eye what sleeps?) must from the blind borrow this light.

“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

who could do four haircuts in thirteen minutes,
his eyes closed, reciting our National Anthem to the mirror.

“You must drink cucumber vodka and naked sing all night
Unite women and boys of the Earth!”

He played the accordion out of tune in a country
where the only musical instrument is the door.