"Author's Prayer"

If I speak for the dead, I must leave
this 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 year is it?"
I can dance in my sleep and laugh

in front of the mirror.
Even sleep is a 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.

"Dancing in Odessa"

We lived north of the future, days opene

letters with a child's signature, a raspberry, a page of sky.

My grandmother threw tomatoes

from her balcony, she pulled imagination like a blanket

over my head. I painted

my mother's face. She understood

loneliness, hid the dead in the earth like partisans.

The night undressed us (I counted

its pulse) my mother danced, she filled the past

with peaches, casseroles. At this, my doctor laughed, his granddaughter

touched my eyelid—I kissed

the back of her knee. The city trembled,

a ghost-ship setting sail.

And my classmate invented twenty names for Jew.

He was an angel, he had no name,

we wrestled, yes. My grandfathers fought

the German tanks on tractors, I kept a suitcase full

of Brodsky’s poems. The city trembled,

a ghost-ship setting sail.

At night, I woke to whisper: yes, we lived.

We lived, yes, don’t say it was a dream.

At the local factory, my father

took a handful of snow, put it in my mouth.

The sun began a routine narration,

whitening their bodies: mother, father dancing, moving

as the darkness spoke behind them.

It was April. The sun washed the balconies, April.

I retell the story the light etches

into my hand: Little book, go to the city without me.