Lines for a Lockdown: ‘How are your cousins, the centaur and the unicorn?’

from Jerusalem the Golden

17

Rails in the subway,
what did you know of happiness,
when you were ore in the earth;
now the electric lights shine upon you.

39

What are you doing in our street among the automobiles, horse?
How are your cousins, the centaur and the unicorn?

40

Rooted among roofs, their smoke among the clouds,
factory chimneys – our cedars of Lebanon.

59

All day the pavement has been black
with rain, but in our warm brightly-lit
room, Praise God,
I kept saying to myself,
and saying not a word,
Amen, you answered.

by Charles Reznikoff,

from The Poems of Charles Reznikoff, 1918-1975, edited by Seamus Cooney, Black Sparrow Book, 2005.