As Ilya Kaminsky says, "Everyday life is a wonderful thing and to be quite honest it is all we have. In his early youth, Kaminsky's deafness was overlooked. Like himself, the char Festival Festival archive Bombing of Poems C. For schools For organisations and companies Workshops in leisure time Upcoming workshops Spraakzaam Rotterdam. About Us. Contact us. Ilya Kaminsky. Side by side. Original language from Deaf Republic. Running down Vasenka street my clothes in a pillowcase I was looking for a man who looks exactly like me so I could give him my Sonya, my name, my clothes.
Running down Vasenka street with my lips moving, one of those who run from the trolley that bursts like an intestine in the sun, those who lock the door, lock it with the second key, and who try to speak, stutter but try to speak. Running by windows where women bought lemon and fish and garlic, to the right madame Gornik painted icons sold at morning, to the left lived Veronina, mother of two boys who stole tomato sandwiches from her boys.
We stuttered and drank and laughed like barefoot peasants and also drank quietly, damning only the earth and quietly we made vodka from cherries, vodka from wooden chairs. It has begun: they climb the trolleys at the thief market, breaking all their moments in half. And the army officer says: Boys! Rain leaves the earth and falls straight up as it should. To have a country, so important, to run into walls, into streetlights, into loved ones, as one should. Watch their legs as they run and fall.
I have seen the blue canary of my country watch their legs as they run and fall. Sunlight on the canal outside the train-station. Tony recites poems, forgets I cannot hear.
I watch the sunlight in the rearview mirror of trolleys as they pass. There sat in the poplar two brothers, the barber and podiatrist, in love with the same woman. They drank there and recited each poem they knew. Not a soul noticed: notasoul. The bald man in a barbershop whispers, I will kill him for a box of oranges.
