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 bed 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.
—Ilya Kaminsky
Rights & Access
Ilya Kaminsky “We Lived Happily During the War” from Deaf Republic Originally published in Poetry (May 2009).
Copyright © 2009, 2018 by Ilya Kaminsky.
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.
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Ilya Kaminsky
Ilya Kaminsky (1977- ) was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union, and arrived to the United States in 1993. He is the author of two poetry collections, Dancing in Odessa (2004) and Deaf Republic (2019).