The American Poetry Review

FIVE POEMS

Kama

1.

How on the Kama River the eye grows dark,
when the cities stand on oaken knees.

Disguising itself in a web, beard to beard,
the burning pine grove runs, younger in the water.

The water resisted one hundred and four oars,
bearing them up and down to Kazan and Cherdyn.

There I floated on the river with a curtain in the window,
with a curtain in the window, with my head on fire.

And with medidn’t sleep for five nights, but bore the three guards.

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