Yusef Komunyakaa - Poem: English lyrics

English When I was a boy, he says, the sky began burning, & someone ran knocking on our door one night. The house became birds in the eaves too low for a boy's ears. I heard a girl talking, but they weren't words. I knew one good thing: a girl was somewhere in our house, speaking slow as a sailor's parrot. I glimpsed Alice in Wonderland. Her voice smelled like an orange, though I'd never peeled an orange. I knocked on the walls, in a circle. The voice was almost America. My ears plucked a word out of the air. She said, Friend. I eased open the door hidden behind overcoats in a closet. The young woman was smiling at me. She was teaching herself a language to take her far, far away, & she taught me a word each day to keep secret. But one night I woke to other voices in the house. A commotion downstairs & a pleading. There are promises made at night that turn into stones at daybreak. From my window, I saw the stars burning in the river brighter than a big celebration. I waited for her return, with my hands over my mouth. I can't say her name, because it was dangerous in our house so close to the water. Was she a boy's make-believe friend or a beehive breathing inside the walls? Years later my aunts said two German soldiers shot the girl one night beside the Vistula. This is how I learned your language. It was long ago. It was springtime.