issue 31 > poetry > belo

I know words by touch. Someone else in my place might say he's a tamer of words. But only I—I and my brothers—know to what extent it is I who am tamed by them. The initiative belongs to them. It is they who drive my sled, with neither whip, nor reins, nor a clear path before the great adventure.

Yes, I know words. I have my own vocabulary. What I have suffered, what I have come to know with great effort swells and rolls words against each other. Words are pebbles that roll around the mouth before jumping out. They are heavy and they fall. They are the opposite of birds, even though "bird" is one of them. My life has passed through the dictionary that I am. Life doesn't matter. Someone looking for me has to begin with—and remain with—words. Through various relations of proximity built between them in a poem, maybe we will come to know something. Or even to know nothing, just like me.






Other translations by Alexis Levitin:

Three Poems from Orphaned Birds