the fundamental equation
of an empty street
in a rundown neighborhood

You’ve been paying visits
To that hunchbacked tailor
In his long-torn-down shop,

and you shudder
as you realize it’s only you

Sat up
Like a firecracker
In bed,

This couple strolling arm in arm
Must be figments of someone’s revery.
They stop often to linger over a kiss,

That was the year the Nazis marched into Vienna,
Superman made his debut in Action Comics,
Stalin was killing off his fellow revolutionaries,

It pains me to see an old woman fret over
A few small coins outside a grocery store—
How swiftly I forget her as my own grief

Bad luck, my very own, sit down and listen to me:
You make yourself scarce for months at the time
Making preparations for some new calamity,

We played war during the war,
Margaret. Toy soldiers were in demand,

Just before the war, a foreign film crew burst into Ruža’s village
and turned the country idyll into chaos: prefabricated shacks
appeared, houses were quickly painted and skilled foreigners