Monthly Poem: Ilya Kaminsky

This month's poem is from Ilya Kaminksy's first book Dancing in Odessa. I am attracted to Kaminsky's poems mostly because their engagement in the narrative of displacement, specially that of the immigrant in America. 

Author's Prayer

If I speak for the dead, I must leave

the animal of my body,

I must write the same poem over and over,

for an empty page is the white flag of their surrender.

If I speak for them, I must walk on the edge

of myself, I must live as a blind man

who runs through rooms without

touching the furniture.

Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking "what time is it"?

I can dance in my sleep and laugh

in front of the mirror.

Even sleep is prayer, Lord,

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.