Map (23 page)

 

Whoever claims that it's omnipotent

is himself living proof

that it's not.

 

There's no life

that couldn't be immortal

if only for a moment.

 

Death

always arrives by that very moment too late.

 

In vain it tugs at the knob

of the invisible door.

As far as you've come

can't be undone.

 

 

The marble tells us in golden syllables:

Here the great man lived, and worked, and died.

Here are the garden paths where he personally scattered the gravel.

Here's the bench—don't touch—he hewed the stone himself.

And here—watch the steps—we enter the house.

 

He managed to come into the world at what was still a fitting time.

All that was to pass passed in this house.

Not in housing projects,

not in furnished but empty quarters,

among unknown neighbors,

on fifteenth floors

that student field trips rarely reach.

 

In this room he thought,

in this alcove he slept,

and here he entertained his guests.

Portraits, armchair, desk, pipe, globe,

flute, well-worn carpet, glassed-in porch.

Here he exchanged bows with the tailor and shoemaker

who made his coats and boots to order.

 

It's not the same as photographs in boxes,

dried-out ballpoint pens in plastic cups,

store-bought clothes in store-bought closets,

a window that looks out on clouds, not passersby.

 

Was he happy? Sad?

That's not the point.

He still made confessions in letters

without thinking they'd be opened en route.

He still kept a careful, candid diary

knowing it wouldn't be seized in a search.

The thing that most frightened him was a comet's flight.

The world's doom lay then in God's hands alone.

 

He was lucky enough to die not in a hospital,

not behind some white, anonymous screen.

There was still someone there at his bedside to memorize

his mumbled words.

 

As if he had been given

a reusable life:

he sent out books to be bound,

he didn't strike the names of the dead from his ledgers.

And the trees that he planted in the garden by his house

still grew for him as
juglans regia,

and
quercus rubra,
and
ulmus,
and
larix,

and
fraxinus excelsior.

 

 

               He would

vacation in a mountain boardinghouse, he would

come down for lunch, from his

table by the window he would

scan the four spruces, branch to branch,

without shaking off the freshly fallen snow.

 

Goateed, balding,

gray-haired, in glasses,

with coarsened, weary features,

with a wart on his cheek and a furrowed forehead,

as if clay had covered up the angelic marble—he wouldn't

know himself when it all happened.

The price, after all, for not having died already

goes up not in leaps but step by step, and he would

pay that price, too.

About his ear, just grazed by the bullet

when he ducked at the last minute, he would

say: “I was damned lucky.”

 

While waiting to be served his noodle soup, he would

read a paper with the current date,

giant headlines, the tiny print of ads,

or drum his fingers on the white tablecloth, and his hands would

have been used a long time now,

with their chapped skin and swollen veins.

 

Sometimes someone would

yell from the doorway: “Mr. Baczyński,
^*
phone call for you”—

and there'd be nothing strange about that

being him, about him standing up, straightening his sweater,

and slowly moving toward the door.

 

At this sight no one would

stop talking, no one would

freeze in midgesture, midbreath,

because this commonplace event would

be treated—such a pity—

as a commonplace event.

 

 

Few of them made it to thirty.

Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.

Childhood ended as fast as wolf cubs grow.

One had to hurry, to get on with life

before the sun went down,

before the first snow.

 

Thirteen-year-olds bearing children,

four-year-olds stalking birds' nests in the rushes,

leading the hunt at twenty—

they aren't yet, then they are gone.

Infinity's ends fused quickly.

Witches chewed charms

with all the teeth of youth intact.

A son grew to manhood beneath his father's eye.

Beneath the grandfather's blank sockets the grandson was born.

 

And anyway they didn't count the years.

They counted nets, pods, sheds, and axes.

Time, so generous toward any petty star in the sky,

offered them a nearly empty hand

and quickly took it back, as if the effort were too much.

One step more, two steps more

along the glittering river

that sprang from darkness and vanished into darkness.

 

There wasn't a moment to lose,

no deferred questions, no belated revelations,

just those experienced in time.

Wisdom couldn't wait for gray hair.

It had to see clearly before it saw the light

and to hear every voice before it sounded.

 

Good and evil—

they knew little of them, but knew all:

when evil triumphs, good goes into hiding;

when good is manifest, then evil lies low.

Neither can be conquered

or cast off beyond return.

Hence, if joy, then with a touch of fear;

if despair, then not without some quiet hope.

Life, however long, will always be short.

Too short for anything to be added.

 

 

And who's this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe?

That's tiny baby Adolf, the Hitlers' little boy!

Will he grow up to be an LLD?

Or a tenor in Vienna's Opera House?

Whose teensy hand is this, whose little ear and eye and nose?

Whose tummy full of milk, we just don't know:

printer's, doctor's, merchant's, priest's?

Where will those tootsy-wootsies finally wander?

To a garden, to a school, to an office, to a bride?

Maybe to the Bürgermeister's daughter?

 

Precious little angel, mommy's sunshine, honey bun.

While he was being born, a year ago,

there was no dearth of signs on the earth and in the sky:

spring sun, geraniums in windows,

the organ grinder's music in the yard,

a lucky fortune wrapped in rosy paper.

Then just before the labor his mother's fateful dream.

A dove seen in a dream means joyful news—

if it is caught, a long-awaited guest will come.

Knock knock, who's there, it's Adolf's heartchen knocking.

 

A little pacifier, diaper, rattle, bib,

our bouncing boy, thank God and knock on wood, is well,

looks just like his folks, like a kitten in a basket,

like the tots in every other family album.

Sh-h-h, let's not start crying, sugar.

The camera will click from under that black hood.

 

The Klinger Atelier, Grabenstrasse, Braunau.

And Braunau is a small but worthy town—

honest businesses, obliging neighbors,

smell of yeast dough, of gray soap.

No one hears howling dogs, or fate's footsteps.

A history teacher loosens his collar

and yawns over homework.

 

 

Our twentieth century was going to improve on the others.

It will never prove it now,

now that its years are numbered,

its gait is shaky,

its breath is short.

 

Too many things have happened

that weren't supposed to happen,

and what was supposed to come about

has not.

 

Happiness and spring, among other things,

were supposed to be getting closer.

 

Fear was expected to leave the mountains and the valleys.

Truth was supposed to hit home

before a lie.

 

A couple of problems weren't going

to come up anymore:

hunger, for example,

and war, and so forth.

 

There was going to be respect

for helpless people's helplessness,

trust, that kind of stuff.

 

Anyone who planned to enjoy the world

is now faced

with a hopeless task.

 

Stupidity isn't funny.

Wisdom isn't gay.

Hope

isn't that young girl anymore,

et cetera, alas.

 

God was finally going to believe