Яна Кане - Зимородок

One was destroyed.

Another – left alive

And whole enough

To heal, even to thrive.

What, for lack of a better word,

Gets called “survivor guilt”,

Is not.

It is a feeling that’s not built

Upon a solid foundation

Of cause and effect:

“You acted wrongly;

Wrongly failed to act;

You won by cheating

In some vital contest.”

It is a phantom pain,

The non-existence of a contrast,

The absence of a difference

(Be it of substance or of context)

That would be relevant and plain,

That would, failing to justify,

At least explain….

If you have never been a refugee

Do not say:

“I would not have been able to…”,

Even if you mean it

To express admiration.

A refugee is not made

Of sterner stuff

Than your own

Soft, vulnerable core.

A refugee is you yourself,

Two turns of fate away

From where you are

Now.

Sometimes, at night, I’m visited by a ghost

Of my own self, but from a past existence.

I don’t feel frightened – after all, she’s me.

I watch her move and hover in the distance.

I think she’s curious about my present life.

She pauses by the shelves and long she looks

At pictures of new friends and those she knew,

At souvenirs of travels, at my books.

At last she turns and glances at my bed,

And then at me.

I do not see a trace

Of anger, accusation or contempt

Upon her face – my own younger face.

I almost can believe that she forgave

This life that I have built above her grave.

A midnight voice —

A shard of ice

That would not melt

And would not yield.

A brand, a scar that would not fade.

A whetstone keeping sharp the blade

That, poised to heed the sudden call,

Presses its edge against my soul.

The whistle of a faraway train

Blows and blows in the winter night,

Singing a wild song of speed and distance,

Of the relentless motion of a beam of light

Slicing through the darkness,

Of a darkness that you cannot outrun

Even at the speed of light.

Black sky.

Silver sliver.

Soft air.

Wind-shiver.

Sleeping banks.

Wakeful river.

Still rock.

Skipping stone.

By myself.

Not alone.

Our silences

Stack one inside another

Like matryoshka dolls.

Yesterday’s unsaid words

Fit into the hollows

Of today’s evasions.

And they, in turn,

Will fill tomorrow’s shell.

Day after day,

The lacquered face

Appears the same —

Round, rosy-cheeked

And smiling brightly.

Yet larger,

Each time larger

Than before.

It has no name, this enchanted land.

At the edge of pale water on the silver sand

My feet do not leave any traces.

The river current runs cold and deep.

On the mirrored surface white lilies sleep.

My eyes meet no reflection.

Eternal spring blooms on silent trees,

Amber honey is studded with golden bees.

I feel neither sting nor sweetness.

Bronze lions with eyes made of emerald glass

Rest with marble lambs in the sunlit grass.

I pass like a shadow between them

My family tree has been replanted

Too many times.

The bark is thick with scars

From all the truths professed, attacked, recanted,

The proclamations nailed to our limbs,

The warring symbols carved

Into our living hides.

Too many times

We have been broken jagged,

Swept by floods,

Then worn back down to smoothness

By the tides

Of moon-mad salt and blood.

Too many times, too many times.

Too many times.

This is not nostalgia.

My home is here, not there.

It is just that I was born in that city.

My memory still flows

Through the river delta

Where the sky is mirrored

Within the slow streams.

There is no line that separates

Below from above —

All is one shimmering whole.

In the opalescent air of white nights

The bridges open

To let tall ships come in.

Tall ships —

The welded steel of my own time,

The ghostly planks and sailcloth

Of distant centuries —

Glide past the curving granite

Of the embankments.

The bridges raise

The fretwork of their railings.

Their black gossamer wings

Hover above the water.

This is not nostalgia.

My home is here, not there.

It is just that I was born in that city.

The memory of my first breath

Stays synchronized

With the moving wings of iron butterflies.

The memory of my first heartbeat

Echoes the wake

That laps against the sinuous granite.

Suburban New Jersey. A small town. Home.

A delightful place, if you know how to delight

In the shade of majestic old beech trees;

In the glistening colors, the rainbow of flavors

Of the tomatoes, eggplants and apples

Filling the bins of the farmer’s market each Thursday;

In the September ritual:

Broods of wide-eyed freshmen

From a nearby campus,

Led along Main Street by the mavens,

Their resident advisors,

Who point out the town attractions.

The ice-cream shop – great milk shakes!

The train station – get to New York City in under an hour!

Suburban New Jersey. A small town. Home.

An enchanting place, if you are willing to be enchanted

By a secret sorcerer, an anonymous artist,

Who casts a spell over plain small stones:

Paints them with bright colors;

Adorns them with glitter, flowers and sweet sayings;

Leaves them half-hidden

Nestled in the grass,

Cradled by the tree roots.

Come, let us walk together.

Let us keep our eyes open,

Ready to make the acquaintance

Of these stone changelings.

Let us take in the quiet magic

That makes them possible.

There is no place like home.

There is no place.

There is no-place.

There is.

There.

Being bilingual comes in handy

In thinking up logins and passwords.

Booby-trapping an electronic doorway:

Setting up a joke in one language

And delivering the punchline in another;

Barring the entrance with a question

That cannot be answered, but can be translated.

Having died in one language,

Having been reborn in another,

I keep a handful of verbal shrapnel

To remind me of that passage,

Jingling my old nicknames

Like change in my pocket,

Using the razor-edged shards as tools