The only sense that my morning
brain takes is the word "glass" -
and the fact that there are these holes
in the world - and something about a wave.
I stare blindly at the street.
Aren't boulders by the shore like holes
that open and close with each incoming wave?
And isn't their black bulk, in fact, glass?
And aren't my eyes, looking out on the street,
the same? Men in t-shirts, on any given morning,
lift huge rocks and then, with a wave,
let them drop - so the morning
shudders and breaks: its pieces pressed to make the street
or melted down into holes
of air: white hot air: glass.
What a great industrial idea! Meanwhile, down on the street,
you're still waiting. The thin scratches in the glass
between us look, suddenly, like your hair
in
the morning
when it streams across my face. "So there are holes
in the logic oflogic," I think. And then wake. And wave.
Peter Balakian
MANDELSTAM IN ARMENIA, 1930
Between arid houses and crooked streets
a shadow could be your wife or a corpse
and a mule's hooves sounded like Stalin's
fut fingers drumming a table.
In the Caucasus eagles and hawks
hung in the blue's basilica.
A swallow flew off a socle
into the wing ofan echo -
