“It’s difficult to pluck out just one poem from Ilya Kaminsky’s book “Deaf Republic,” because the volume operates best as an occasion versus a moment. This plain-spoken simple poem summarizes a main theme in the work — that of complicity during wartime. The poem subverts a more conventional political poem by leaning into the speaker’s pleasurable life amid the suffering of others. It begins in the first person plural, shifts to the singular first person and then shifts back to the plural, followed by the parenthetical (forgive us) — a pronoun sleight of hand that broadens the complicity to all of us.”-NYT 3.6.22

We Lived Happily During the War

by Ilya Kaminsky

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.