This first US publication of Knuts Skujenieksone of Latvia's foremost contemporary poetsis the author's most important and widely-translated body of work. Convicted in 1962 of anti-Soviet sentiment, Skujenieks wrote these poems during seven years of imprisonment at a labor camp in Mordovia. Vivid and expressive, this collection overcomes the physical experience of confinement in order to assert a limitless creative freedom.

A Love Poem

I would like clarity. To exclude
A relationship's tangled yarn.
Not a word.
Let reaction suffice.

So. Only so....