Quotes from Ilya Kaminsky

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

Time, my twin, take me by the hand through the streets of your city

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.

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.

Lord, such fire from a match you never lit.

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

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.

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.

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?

All that is musical in us is memory.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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)

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