“Deaf Republic,” by Ilya Kaminsky

Dramatis Personae

Our third multimedia poetry feature is drawn from Ilya Kaminsky’s long-awaited “Deaf Republic,” a contemporary epic that, like Homer’s Iliad, captures the sweep of history and the devastation of war. Kaminsky was born in Odessa, in 1977; his family fled the anti-Semitism of post-Soviet Ukraine in 1993 and was granted asylum in the United States. “Deaf Republic,” which comes fifteen years after Kaminsky’s début, “Dancing in Odessa,” is haunted by that experience and shadowed by never-ending conflicts of the present. The apocalypse is here.

Kaminsky, who is hard of hearing himself, has the citizens of this republic speak with hand gestures and signs—some of which punctuate and animate the poems—as they resist a world of misunderstanding and military violence. “Our country woke up next morning and refused to hear soldiers,” he writes. Deafness, here, is an insurgency, a state of being, a rebellion against a world that sees deafness as “a contagious disease.” There is also humor, or at least a profound set of ironies: “each man is already / a finger flipped at the sky.”

Evident throughout is a profound imagination, matched only by the poet’s ability to create a republic of conscience that is ultimately ours, too, and utterly his own—a map of what it means to live “in a peaceful country.”

—Kevin Young

Illustrations based on original drawings by Jennifer Whitten.

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. SONYA BARABINSKI—Vasenka’s best puppeteer, Alfonso’s newlywed wife, and pregnant. CHILD—inside Sonya, seahorse-size, sleeping, and later, Anushka. PETYA—deaf boy, Sonya’s cousin.

MOMMA GALYA ARMOLINSKAYA—puppet theatre owner, instigates insurgency. GALYA’S PUPPETEERS—teach signs from the theatre 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.

“Town”

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, porch lights. 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.

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 alley, 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.

“Town”

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.

“The Town Watches”

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 wrapping the body of my pregnant wife—

Tonight we don’t die and don’t die,

the earth is still, a helicopter eyeballs my wife—

On earth a man cannot flip a finger at the sky:

each man is already a finger flipped at the sky.

“Army Convoy”

“Hide”

Checkpoints

In the streets, soldiers install hearing checkpoints and nail announcements on posts and doors:

DEAFNESS IS A CONTAGIOUS DISEASE. FOR YOUR OWN PROTECTION, ALL SUBJECTS IN CONTAMINATED AREAS MUST SURRENDER TO BE QUARANTINED WITHIN 24 HOURS!

Sonya and Alfonso teach signs in Central Square. When a patrol walks by, they sit on their hands. We see the Sergeant stop a woman on her way to the market, but she cannot hear. He loads her into a truck. He stops another. She does not hear. He loads her into a truck. A third points to her ears.

In these avenues, deafness is our only barricade.

“Match”

Elegy

Six words, Lord:

please ease of song

my tongue.

“The Town Watches”

Eulogy

You must speak not only of great devastation—

we heard that not from a philosopher but from our neighbor, Alfonso—

his eyes closed, he climbed other people’s porches and recited to his child our National Anthem:

You must speak not only of great devastation— when his child cried, he

made her a newspaper hat and squeezed his silence like two pleats of an accordion:

We must speak not only of great devastation— and he played that accordion out of tune in a country

where the only musical instrument is the door.

“Story”

Galya’s Toast

To your voice, a mysterious virtue, to the twenty-six bones of one foot, the four dimensions of breathing,

to pine, redwood, sword fern, peppermint, to hyacinth and bluebell lily,

to the train conductor’s donkey on a rope, to the smell of lemons, a boy pissing splendidly against the trees.

Bless each thing on earth until it sickens, until each ungovernable heart admits: I confused myself

and yet I loved—and what I loved I forgot, what I forgot brought glory to my travels,

to you I travelled as close as I dared, Lord.

“Earth”

“The Town Watches”

And Yet, on Some Nights

Our country has surrendered.

Years later, some will say none of this happened; the shops were open, we were happy and went to see puppet shows in the park.

And yet, on some nights, townspeople dim the lights and teach their children to sign. Our country is the stage: when patrols march, we sit on our hands. Don’t be afraid, a child signs to a tree, a door.

When patrols march, the avenues empty. Air empties, but for the squeaks of strings and the tap tap of wooden fists against the walls.

We are sitting in the audience, still. Silence, like the bullet that’s missed us, spins—

In a Time of Peace

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.

Notes:

ON SIGNS: In Vasenka, the townspeople invented their own sign language. Some of the signs derived from various traditions (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, American Sign Language, etc.). Other signs might have been made up by citizens, as they tried to create a language not known to authorities.

ON SILENCE: The deaf don’t believe in silence. Silence is the invention of the hearing.

Ilya Kaminsky will publish the poetry collection “Deaf Republic” in March.

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