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PORTSIDE CULTURE

IN A TIME OF PEACE  
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Ilya Kaminsky

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_ Ukanian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky examines the way complicity
with an authoritarian regime can corrupt a whole society. _

, Graywolf Press

 

Inhabitant of earth for fortysomething years
I once found myself in a peaceful country. I watch neighbors open

their phones to watch
a cop demanding a man’s driver’s license. When a man reaches for
his wallet, the cop
shoots. Into the car window. Shoots.

It is a peaceful country.

We pocket our phones and go.
To the dentist,
to pick up the kids from school,
to buy shampoo
and basil.

Ours is a country in which a boy shot by police lies on the pavement
for hours.

We see in his open mouth
the nakedness
of the whole nation.

We watch. Watch
others watch.

The body of a boy lies on the pavement exactly like the body of a
boy—

It is a peaceful country.

And it clips our citizens’ bodies
effortlessly, the way the President’s wife trims her toenails.

All of us
still have to do the hard work of dentist appointments,
of remembering to make
a summer salad: basil, tomatoes, it is a joy, tomatoes, add a little
salt.

This is a time of peace.

I do not hear gunshots,
but watch birds splash over the back yards of the suburbs. How bright
is the sky
as the avenue spins on its axis.
How bright is the sky (forgive me) how bright.

_Ilya Kaminsky is a poet, critic, translator and professor. He is best
known for his poetry collections Dancing in Odesa and Deaf Republic,
which have earned him several awards. In 2019, the BBC named Kaminsky
among "12 Artists who changed the world". (This poem appears in his
collection Deaf Republic.)_

* war
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* Authoritarianism
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* Protest
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