We Lived Happily During the War
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but notenough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
Kaminsky, in a recent interview:
That poem specifically has been shared widely on social media in the wake of Russia’s attack. How do you feel seeing your work resonate, particularly that poem, at this time?
“We Lived Happily During the War” is not a piece of journalism or philosophy, where one might go into facts or questions of ethics. In a poem, one hopes to create an experience in the reader: in this case, the hope of the poem is to help the reader see their own complicity.
The poem doesn’t want to be a pronouncement. The poem is a warning. This is what happens when half-measures take place. “We lived happily during the war,” the poem begins, and it ends with the same words. But by the time it gets to its final line, one hopes the reader might find the horrific irony in that fact of repetition. How many wars can we live through, happily?
One hopes the reader sees the critique of this “we” and what it has done. By the time you get to the repetition of “our country of money” and then to “our great country of money” — one questions the word “great.” That is what art hopes to do: it doesn’t shout at the reader “You must change!” Instead, the reader is changed via the act of reading.
What are you hearing from friends and family right now?
A writer from [Kyiv] tells me he sees people making Molotov cocktails together with their kids. An 80-year-old journalist from Odessa writes: “The air raid just quieted down. It’s a sunny morning.” My cousin tells me potatoes are marked up 50%. A James Joyce translator writes about spending the night sleeping next to a dog in the bomb shelter.
A friend from [Kyiv] emails with a photo of a bullet casing: “There’s a military outpost next to my house, just 1-minute walk. I found this on my balcony. A photo for you — a result of the war in my hand.”
Finally, this conversation I’ll never forget with an older friend from Odessa. After I asked him for any way I could help him, he responded: “Putins come and go. If you want to help, send us some poems and essays. We are starting a new literary magazine.” In the first days of war. Imagine.