The Golem Visits the Marc Chagall Exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery

by | Feb 14, 2023 | Issue Thirty-One, Poetry

There’s a village I return to
like a beggar working the houses,
a burlap sack on my back. I forget 
what it means to be filled with secrets,
the silence of houses sleeping under snow:

My memories are a series of windows, 
smudged by cold and white trees 
fringing a sunset with branches. 

Who can read the language 
on the shadows of gravestones, 
or a boy’s body curled asleep
in snow beneath a slatted fence?

I remember two lovers, 
birds in soundless flight,
her hand outstretched to the east,
his face turned to the sky.

Nothing is given away. 

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