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have nothing except my body, and the walls of this empty apartment flap and flap like a lung.
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More Advance Praise for Deaf Republic
“Pulse-quickening, glinting like unburied ore, grounded equally in the imaginative, political, moral, and personal realms, Deaf Republic is a thunderclap book. American poetry needs what Ilya Kaminsky’s performative, possibility-enlarging, boundlessly surprising pages bring to it. Or at least, I do.”
—Jane Hirshfield
“Deaf Republic is a stunning and prescient drama, like the best books of Márquez and Kundera. Not many American poets, not many poets anywhere, are engaged in this kind of work. I think that Deaf Republic will be a splendid, groundbreaking moment. Reading this book, my overwhelming sense is admiration and pleasure.”
—Kwame Dawes
“Deaf Republic is a perfectly extraordinary book. It is so romantic, and so painful, with such a stunning lightness of touch but such devastating weight. It speaks forward and backward, directly to—and beautifully beyond—the time of its creation in the way that only truly great literature does. I will keep reading it, again and again, as the world turns. I feel quite sure my grandchildren will read this book. It’s one of those.”
—Max Porter
Praise for Ilya Kaminsky
“Kaminsky is more than a promising young poet; he is a poet of promise fulfilled. I am in awe of his gifts.”
—Carolyn Forché
“Ilya Kaminsky proceeds like a perfect gardener—he grafts the gifts of the Russian newer literary tradition on the American tree of poetry and forgetting.”
—Adam Zagajewski
“Passionate, daring to laugh and weep, direct and unexpected, Ilya Kaminsky’s poetry has a glorious tilt and scope.”
—Robert Pinsky
“With his magical style in English, [Kaminsky’s] poems … seem like a literary counterpart to Chagall in which laws of gravity have been suspended and colors reassigned, but only to make everyday reality that much more indelible. His imagination is so transformative that we respond with equal measures of grief and exhilaration.”
—American Academy of Arts and Letters citation for the Addison M. Metcalf Award
DEAF REPUBLIC
Also by Ilya Kaminsky
POETRY
Dancing in Odessa (2004)
Musica Humana (chapbook, 2003)
TRANSLATIONS
Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (2012) with Jean Valentine
Mourning Ploughs the Winter: Poems of Guy Jean (2012) with Katie Farris
This Lamentable City: Poems of Polina Barskova (2010) with Katie Farris, Rachel Galvin, and Matthew Zapruder
ANTHOLOGIES
In the Shape of a Human Body I Am Visiting the Earth: Poems from Far and Wide (2017) with Dominic Luxford and Jesse Nathan
Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poems and Prose (2014) with Katie Farris and Valzhyna Mort
A God in the House: Poets Talk about Faith (2012) with Katherine Towler
Homage to Paul Celan (2012) with G. C. Waldrep
The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (2010) with Susan Harris
Copyright © 2019 by Ilya Kaminsky
The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation. Significant support has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.
Published by Graywolf Press
250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401
All rights reserved.
www.graywolfpress.org
Published in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-55597-831-0
Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-880-8
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
First Graywolf Printing, 2019
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018947088
Cover design: Kapo Ng
Cover art: Gail Schneider
Interior illustrations: Jennifer Whitten
In Memory of Ella and Viktor Kaminsky
For Katie Farris
Contents
We Lived Happily during the War
Deaf Republic
Dramatis Personae
ACT ONE: THE TOWNSPEOPLE TELL THE STORY OF SONYA AND ALFONSO
Gunshot
As Soldiers March, Alfonso Covers the Boy’s Face with a Newspaper
Alfonso, in Snow
Deafness, an Insurgency, Begins
Alfonso Stands Answerable
That Map of Bone and Opened Valves
The Townspeople Circle the Boy’s Body
Of Weddings before the War
Still Newlyweds
Soldiers Aim at Us
Checkpoints
Before the War, We Made a Child
As Soldiers Choke the Stairwell
4 a.m. Bombardment
Arrival
Lullaby
Question
While the Child Sleeps, Sonya Undresses
A Cigarette
A Dog Sniffs
What We Cannot Hear
Central Square
A Widower
For His Wife
I, This Body
Her Dresses
Elegy
Above Blue Tin Roofs, Deafness
A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck
In the Bright Sleeve of the Sky
To Live
The Townspeople Watch Them Take Alfonso
Away
Eulogy
Question
Such Is the Story Made of Stubbornness and a Little Air
ACT TWO: THE TOWNSPEOPLE TELL THE STORY OF MOMMA GALYA
Townspeople Speak of Galya on Her Green Bicycle
When Momma Galya First Protested
A Bundle of Laundry
What Are Days
Galya Whispers, as Anushka Nuzzles
Galya’s Puppeteers
In Bombardment, Galya
The Little Bundles
Galya’s Toast
Theater Nights
And While Puppeteers Are Arrested
Soldiers Don’t Like Looking Foolish
Search Patrols
Lullaby
Firing Squad
Question
Yet, I Am
The Trial
Pursued by the Men of Vasenka
Anonymous
And Yet, on Some Nights
In a Time of Peace
DEAF REPUBLIC
We Lived Happily during the War
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 b
ed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house—
I took 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.
Deaf Republic
Dramatis Personae
TOWNSPEOPLE OF VASENKA—the chorus, “we” who tell the story, and on balconies, the wind fondles laundry lines.
ALFONSO BARABINSKI—puppeteer, Sonya’s newlywed husband, and the “I” of Act One.
SONYA BARABINSKI—Vasenka’s best puppeteer, Alfonso’s newlywed wife, and pregnant.
CHILD—inside Sonya, seahorse-sized, sleeping, and later, Anushka.
PETYA—deaf boy, Sonya’s cousin.
MOMMA GALYA ARMOLINSKAYA—puppet theater owner, instigates insurgency, and the “I” of Act Two.
GALYA’S PUPPETEERS—teach signs from the theater balcony, as if regulating traffic:
for Soldier—finger like a beak pecks one eye.
for Snitch—fingers peck both eyes.
for Army Jeep—clenched fist moves forward.
SOLDIERS—arrive in Vasenka to “protect our freedom,” speaking a language no one understands.
PUPPETS—hang on doors and porches of the families of the arrested, except for one puppet lying on the cement: a middle-aged woman wearing a child like a broken arm, her mouth filling with snow.
ACT ONE
The Townspeople Tell the Story of Sonya and Alfonso
Gunshot
Our country is the stage.
When soldiers march into town, public assemblies are officially prohibited. But today, neighbors flock to the piano music from Sonya and Alfonso’s puppet show in Central Square. Some of us have climbed up into trees, others hide behind benches and telegraph poles.
When Petya, the deaf boy in the front row, sneezes, the sergeant puppet collapses, shrieking. He stands up again, snorts, shakes his fist at the laughing audience.
An army jeep swerves into the square, disgorging its own Sergeant.
Disperse immediately!
Disperse immediately! the puppet mimics in a wooden falsetto.
Everyone freezes except Petya, who keeps giggling. Someone claps a hand over his mouth. The Sergeant turns toward the boy, raising his finger.
You!
You! the puppet raises a finger.
Sonya watches her puppet, the puppet watches the Sergeant, the Sergeant watches Sonya and Alfonso, but the rest of us watch Petya lean back, gather all the spit in his throat, and launch it at the Sergeant.
The sound we do not hear lifts the gulls off the water.
As Soldiers March, Alfonso Covers the Boy’s Face with a Newspaper
Fourteen people, most of us strangers,
watch Sonya kneel by Petya
shot in the middle of the street.
She picks up his spectacles shining like two coins, balances them on his nose.
Observe this moment
—how it convulses—
Snow falls and the dogs run into the streets like medics.
Fourteen of us watch:
Sonya kisses his forehead—her shout a hole
torn in the sky, it shimmers the park benches, porchlights.
We see in Sonya’s open mouth
the nakedness
of a whole nation.
She stretches out
beside the little snowman napping in the middle of the street.
As picking up its belly the country runs.
Alfonso, in Snow
You are alive, I whisper to myself, therefore something in you listens.
Something runs down the street, falls, fails to get up.
I run etcetera with my legs and my hands behind
my pregnant wife etcetera down Vasenka Street I run it
only takes a few minutes etcetera to make a man.
Deafness, an Insurgency, Begins
Our country woke up next morning and refused to hear soldiers.
In the name of Petya, we refuse.
At six a.m., when soldiers compliment girls in the alleyway, the girls slide by, pointing to their ears. At eight, the bakery door is shut in soldier Ivanoff’s face, though he’s their best customer. At ten, Momma Galya chalks NO ONE HEARS YOU on the gates of the soldiers’ barracks.
By eleven a.m., arrests begin.
Our hearing doesn’t weaken, but something silent in us strengthens.
After curfew, families of the arrested hang homemade puppets out of their windows. The streets empty but for the squeaks of strings and the tap tap, against the buildings, of wooden fists and feet.
In the ears of the town, snow falls.
Alfonso Stands Answerable
My people, you were really something fucking fine
on the morning of first arrests:
our men, once frightened, bound to their beds, now stand up like human masts—
deafness passes through us like a police whistle.
Here then I
testify:
each of us
comes home, shouts at a wall, at a stove, at a refrigerator, at himself. Forgive me, I
was not honest with you,
life—
to you I stand answerable.
I run etcetera with my legs and my hands etcetera I run down Vasenka Street etcetera—
Whoever listens:
thank you for the feather on my tongue,
thank you for our argument that ends, thank you for deafness,
Lord, such fire
from a match you never lit.
That Map of Bone and Opened Valves
I watched the Sergeant aim, the deaf boy take iron and fire in his mouth—
his face on the asphalt,
that map of bone and opened valves.
It’s the air. Something in the air wants us too much.
The earth is still.
The tower guards eat cucumber sandwiches.
This first day
soldiers examine the ears of bartenders, accountants, soldiers—
the wicked things silence does to soldiers.
They tear Gora’s wife from her bed like a door off a bus.
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.
I touch the walls, feel the pulse of the house, and I
stare up wordless and do not know why I am alive.
We tiptoe this city,
Sonya and I,
between theaters and gardens and wrought-iron gates—
Be courageous, we say, but no one
is courageous, as a sound we do not hear
lifts the birds off the water.
The Townspeople Circle the Boy’s Body
The dead boy’s body still lies in the square.
Sonya spoons him on the cement. Inside her—her child sleeps. Momma Galya brings Sonya a pillow. A man in a wheelchair brings a gallon of milk.
Alfonso lies next to them in the snow. Wraps one arm around her belly. He puts one hand to the ground. He hears the cars stop, doors slam, dogs bark. When he pulls his hand off the ground, he hears nothing.
Behind them, a puppet lies on cement, mouth filling with snow.
Forty minutes later, it is morning. Soldiers step back into the square.
The townspeople lock arms to form a circle and another circle around that circle and another circle to keep the soldiers from the boy’s body.
We watch Sonya stand (the child inside her straightens its leg). Someone has given her a sign, which she holds high above her head: THE PEOPLE ARE DEAF.
Of Weddings before the War
Yes, I bought you a wedding dress big enough for
the two of us
and in the taxi home
we kissed a coin from your mouth to mine.
The landlady might’ve noticed
a drizzle of stains on the sheets—
angels could do it more neatly
but they don’t. I can still climb your
underwear, my ass
is smaller than yours!
You pat my cheek,
beam—
may you win the lottery and spend it all on doctors!
You are two fingers more beautiful than any other woman—
I am not a poet, Sonya,
I want to live in your hair.
You leapt on my back, I
ran to the shower,
and yes, I slipped on the wet floor—
I watched you gleam in the shower
holding your
breasts in your hand—
two small explosions.
Still Newlyweds
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.
Soldiers Aim at Us
They fire
as the crowd of women flees inside the nostrils of searchlights
—may God have a photograph of this—
in the piazza’s bright air, soldiers drag Petya’s body and his head
bangs the stairs. I
feel through my wife’s shirt the shape
of our child.
Soldiers drag Petya up the stairs and homeless dogs, thin as philosophers,
understand everything and bark and bark.
I, now on the bridge, with no camouflage of speech, a body