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During these trysts of theirs, the only thing that's steamy is the tea.

People sit on their chairs and move their lips.

Everyone crosses only his own legs

so that one foot is resting on the floor

while the other dangles freely in midair.

Only now and then does somebody get up,

go to the window,

and through a crack in the curtains

take a peep out at the street.

 

 

The world is never ready

for the birth of a child.

 

Our ships are not yet back from Winnland.

We still have to get over the S. Gothard pass.

We've got to outwit the watchmen on the desert of Thor,

fight our way through the sewers to Warsaw's center,

gain access to King Harald the Butterpat,

and wait until the downfall of Minister Fouché.

Only in Acapulco

can we begin anew.

 

We've run out of bandages,

matches, hydraulic presses, arguments, and water.

We haven't got the trucks, we haven't got the Minghs' support.

This skinny horse won't be enough to bribe the sheriff.

No news so far about the Tartars' captives.

We'll need a warmer cave for winter

and someone who can speak Harari.

 

We don't know whom to trust in Nineveh,

what conditions the Prince-Cardinal will decree,

which names Beria has still got inside his files.

They say Karol the Hammer strikes tomorrow at dawn.

In this situation, let's appease Cheops,

report ourselves of our own free will,

change faiths,

pretend to be friends with the Doge,

and say that we've got nothing to do with the Kwabe tribe.

 

Time to light the fires.

Let's send a cable to grandma in Zabierzów.

Let's untie the knots in the yurt's leather straps.

 

May delivery be easy,

may our child grow and be well.

Let him be happy from time to time

and leap over abysses.

Let his heart have strength to endure

and his mind be awake and reach far.

 

But not so far

that it sees into the future.

Spare him

that one gift,

O heavenly powers.

 

 

An endless rain is just beginning.

Into the ark, for where else can you go,

you poems for a single voice,

private exultations,

unnecessary talents,

surplus curiosity,

short-range sorrows and fears,

eagerness to see things from all six sides.

 

Rivers are swelling and bursting their banks.

Into the ark, all you chiaroscuros and half-tones,

you details, ornaments, and whims,

silly exceptions,

forgotten signs,

countless shades of the color gray,

play for play's sake,

and tears of mirth.

 

As far as the eye can see, there's water and hazy horizon.

Into the ark, plans for the distant future,

joy in difference,

admiration for the better man,

choice not narrowed down to one of two,

outworn scruples,

time to think it over,

and the belief that all this

will still come in handy someday.

 

For the sake of the children

that we still are,

fairy tales have happy endings.

That's the only finale that will do here, too.

The rain will stop,

the waves will subside,

the clouds will part

in the cleared-up sky,

and they'll be once more

what clouds overhead ought to be:

lofty and rather lighthearted

in their likeness to things

drying in the sun—

isles of bliss,

lambs,

cauliflowers,

diapers.

 

 

I prefer movies.

I prefer cats.

I prefer the oaks along the Warta.

I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.

I prefer myself liking people

to myself loving mankind.

I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.

I prefer the color green.

I prefer not to maintain

that reason is to blame for everything.

I prefer exceptions.

I prefer to leave early.

I prefer talking to doctors about something else.

I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.

I prefer the absurdity of writing poems

to the absurdity of not writing poems.

I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries

that can be celebrated every day.

I prefer moralists

who promise me nothing.

I prefer cunning kindness to the overtrustful kind.

I prefer the earth in civvies.

I prefer conquered to conquering countries.

I prefer having some reservations.

I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.

I prefer the Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.

I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.

I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.

I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.

I prefer desk drawers.

I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here

to many things I've also left unsaid.

I prefer zeros on the loose

to those lined up behind a cipher.

I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.

I prefer to knock on wood.

I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.

I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility

that existence has its own reason for being.

 

 

The commonplace miracle:

that so many common miracles take place.

 

The usual miracle:

invisible dogs barking

in the dead of night.

 

One of many miracles:

a small and airy cloud

is able to upstage the massive moon.

 

Several miracles in one:

an alder is reflected in the water

and is reversed from left to right

and grows from crown to root

and never hits bottom

though the water isn't deep.

 

A run-of-the-mill miracle:

winds mild to moderate

turning gusty in storms.

 

A miracle in the first place:

cows will be cows.

 

Next but not least:

just this cherry orchard

from just this cherry pit.

 

A miracle minus top hat and tails:

fluttering white doves.

 

A miracle (what else can you call it):

the sun rose today at three fourteen
A.M.

and will set tonight at one past eight.

 

A miracle that's lost on us:

the hand actually has fewer than six fingers

but still it's got more than four.

 

A miracle, just take a look around:

the inescapable earth.

 

An extra miracle, extra and ordinary:

the unthinkable

can be thought.

 

 

An odd planet, and those on it are odd, too.

They're subject to time, but they won't admit it.

They have their own ways of expressing protest.

They make up little pictures, like for instance this:

 

At first glance, nothing special.

What you see is water.

And one of its banks.

And a little boat sailing strenuously upstream.

And a bridge over the water, and people on the bridge.

It appears that the people are picking up their pace

because of the rain just beginning to lash down

from a dark cloud.

 

The thing is, nothing else happens.

The cloud doesn't change its color or its shape.

The rain doesn't increase or subside.

The boat sails on without moving.

The people on the bridge are running now

exactly where they ran before.

 

It's difficult at this point to keep from commenting.

This picture is by no means innocent.

Time has been stopped here.

Its laws are no longer consulted.

It has been relieved of its influence over the course of events.

It has been ignored and insulted.

 

On account of a rebel,

one Hiroshige Utagawa

(a being who, by the way,

died long ago and in due course),

time has tripped and fallen down.

 

It might well be simply a trifling prank,

an antic on the scale of just a couple of galaxies,

let us, however, just in case,

add one final comment for the record:

 

For generations, it's been considered good form here

to think highly of this picture,

to be entranced and moved.

 

There are those for whom even this is not enough.

They go so far as to hear the rain's spatter,