Tedna Street
February 18, 2009 by Ilya Kaminsky
Filed under Poetry
On the balconies, sunlight, on poplars, sunlight, on our lips.
Today no one was shooting, there is just sunlight and sunlight.
A girl cuts her hair with imaginary scissors—
A girl in sunlight, a school in sunlight, a horse in sunlight.
A boy steals a pair of shoes from an arrogant man in sunlight.
I speak and I say sunlight falling inside us, sunlight.
When they shot fifty women on Tedna St.,
I sat down to write and tell you what I know:
A child learns the world by putting it in his mouth,
A boy becomes a man and a man earth.
Body, they blame you for all things and they
seek in the body what does not live in the body.
