ILYA KAMINSKY

grab his ear
   Van gogh,

he will make you dance
    and celebrate at a village
 outside Odessa a Bar Mitzvah dance
in Russian - Ukranian
 hand outs of deaf programs

   about pogroms on the steppes
and massacres of those little odes
 to BE DEAD be said Kaddish before
it happens with a reaction of humor
in versification codes of the Vistula
to an American audience
on the lecture circuit floor
ALL are memory blessed by a MONOTONY
and silence, not waiting for more violations

   such agony skids on ice
 over the Archangel forest,

in this last Dante circle

here at the last stop
of the nations, California.