My counterpart was born in 1925
in a city in Poland—I don’t like to see him born
in a little village fifty miles from Kiev
and have to fight so wildly just for access
to books, I don’t want to see him struggle
half his life to see a painting or just to
sit in one of the plush chairs listening to music.
He was dragged away in 1940
and turned to some use in 1941 . . .
