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Authors: Tadeusz Rozewicz

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those departing footsteps were they hers
or the steps of a condemned
Brother
 
the slamming of a door
 
“Ich gehe mit dir Bruder
an jenen Ort
und ich höre dein letztes Wort”
 
are you refusing
to answer my question
I asked him a second and third time
then he raised his eyes to me
again placed his finger
on his lips
 
stood up and left
 
followed Christ
emulated Christ
 
he walked across a field with other
students hungry they picked
ripe ears of corn
husked the grains ate them
from their hands
they husked the grains with their fingers
I tried to catch up with them
and found myself suddenly in the light
in the land of childhood
in an earthly paradise I recovered
the eyes and lips
of my girl and cornflowers
and clouds
 
then He came to a stop
and said
friend
strike out one “big word”
from your poem
strike out the word “beauty”
 
[Wrocław 2002–2004]
Der Zauberer The Magician
the German papers reported
“Berlin in Christo-Fieber”
 
Christo swathed the Reichstag
in thousands of yards
of marvelous silver
fabric
 
first to disappear was the doorway
with the inscription
“Dem deutschen Volke”
“To the German nation”
 
Once long long ago
before Christo and Jeanne-Claude
were born
the Reichstag went up in flames
the glow filled the sky over Germany
over Europe
over the world
then Heine Brecht
the Mann brothers
were burned at the stake
Benn searched feverishly
for his Aryan roots
Ernst Jünger pulled on his gloves
 
Goebbels barked
lied through his teeth
he had an artistic soul
wrote plays
 
Göring guffawed and bellowed
plundered
masterpieces of painting
a fake Vermeer
and a genuine Vermeer
 
carpet bombing turned
the city to rubble and ash
Adelheid hat Supp' gekocht
die ganze Woch'
auf einem Knoch'
years passed wars passed
the rain stopped falling
the sun rose over Berlin
the smiling end of the 20th century
no one remembered
Lubbe or Dymitrov
it was 1995
 
the Reichstag wrapped in silver cloth
had forgotten its own history
 
cold tongues of fire tried to tell
the young about those black flames
but they weren't listening
they were busy with the love parade
with pearls in their belly buttons with earrings
 
but let's return
to the wrapping of the Reichstag
 
perhaps it was a symbolic day
marking the marriage
of a historic building
with the present
 
Chancelor Kohl didn't understand
the point of all the wrapping
he can be forgiven
by accident he became a Historic Figure
chancelor of a united Germany
along with Reagan Wałęsa
he caused the downfall of the empire of evil
helped to bring down the Berlin wall
and the Chinese wall
and to replace the iron curtain
with a velvet curtain
 
Ernst Jünger removed his gloves
 
went back to his collection
of butterflies and beetles
turned 100
he left
many books
notes from the Caucasus
from 1942–1943
 
“yet the partisans are excluded
from the rules of war, if such a thing
can still be spoken of. One encircles them
in the forest like a pack of wolves in order
to destroy them. I have heard things
that belong in the realm of zoology”
 
he was by disposition an entomologist
 
we had something in common
I like beetles and butterflies and insects
I fought as a partisan and I am a writer . . .
luxury
Tuesday April 23
the 113th day of 2002
 
today
I have the day off
 
I listen to the rain falling
I read poems
by Staff and Tuwim
 
“I'll be the leading Futurist in the land.
Which doesn't mean I'll be the kind of ass
Who scoffs at poems, and makes a lot of fuss
And plays the magus . . .”
 
I read a page from the calendar
Angelica
a highly aromatic plant
known to antiquity
can a person recall
the taste of life
the taste of angelica vodka
 
I listen to the rain falling
 
such a luxury is
beyond the reach
of the mighty of this world
they have to shake innumerable
sweaty hands kiss flags
pat children
and old crones on the head
wipe their suits and their faces
wipe
paint from their faces
I pity
the “great” (of this world)
because they cannot throw
tomatoes at anyone
they cannot catch
little brats
by the ear
 
I thank the Lord
I don't have to solicit the votes
of idiots
 
I listen to the rain
 
so little
is needed
for happiness
 
[April 2002–July 2003]
July 14 2004–in the night
from nature I drew
the bud
of a tea rose
nestling
in green leaves
 
I had
a green ballpoint pen
and a blue crayon
the flower is blue
and the leaves are green
 
on July 1 2004 in the newspaper
I had seen blue roses
(along with a caption)
 
“the Japanese scientists' success
is the fruit of 14 years' work
at a cost of 28 million dollars”
 
the green leaves surround
both the flowers and the smiling
face of a young woman
a gene from pansies
gave the petals their hue
 
did those worthy Japanese researchers
with their 28 million “greenbacks”
make something beautiful and useful?
my rose was created from want
theirs from excess and a desire for profit
 
Such things should not be done
to roses in the land of cherry blossoms . . .
 
render unto the pansy that which is the pansy's
and to the rose (that) which is the rose's
you are requested to do so
by Tadeusz Rose-wicz poet of Poland
 
As he walks through the Japanese garden
in the city of Wrocław
he dreams he is in Kyoto
he's done so for half a century
 
as a young man
he longed to lay a red rose
on the white bosom
of a Japanese woman
at the rising of the sun
before an unknown woman
what extraordinary eyes
enwrapped in shadow
far-away
wide-awake alert
enwrapped in sleep
everything in that gaze is
secret the dusk and the mystery
of her gender and stifled
cries and sighs throbbing
in her white neck
 
we sit side by side
distance grows and a smile
that fades on its way to me
he's a bit scruffy (funny old man)
absent-minded (he's lost his glasses)
he writes poems
but I'm an old
catcher of butterflies
and of those whose name is frailty
even as a child and a youth
on my fingertips I had
dust from the blue wings
of the eternally feminine
 
I caught your somewhat
amused smile
and your glance
like a chip of ice
like white-hot
iron
 
I know
you're like the wildflowers
of my idyllic youth
cornflowers poppies
the distant field
floats away with us
eyes closed
in a guesthouse
a church tower rising
against a clear sky
 
beyond it a dark blue mountain
woven with the white of birches
 
today there's not a cloud
to be seen
said Mrs. Jadzia
in a voice that rang
like an invocation
to life
the night phantom melted away
(was that you calling out
in your sleep sir?)
 
I ate breakfast
signed two books
for some young people
from Krotoszyn
shouted “thank you”
toward the kitchen
locked myself in “my” room
took Geriavit
Concor Proscar Horzol
Rutinoscorbin
primrose extract Bilobil
Vitamin A + E
Espumisan etc
 
“don't forget your medications”
 
I sat down at the table
 
on it (covered
with a newspaper just in case)
lay a long poem
or rather the ghost of one
“gray zone”
 
I raised my eyes to heaven
saw the ceiling
remembered
the Lacrimal
 
on the windowsill
were yellow buttercups
or maybe marsh marigolds
Butterblumen
(butter flowers?
or flowers of butter?)
 
the news
in the papers was filled with blood
everything had become
dark fragile
once again
in the eyes of women
there was fear
 
the next day I left
letter in green ink
letters arrive
 
I'm leaving today
(not on Friday)
 
sending you kisses
thinking of you
missing you
yearning for you
 
The end of “Operations”
the end of the stay
the end of the innocent
and not-so-innocent flirtations
of the “rut”
under the benches
empty liquor bottles
colored and clear
cheerful blown-up
condoms floating off
balloons balloons
cries the hawker
 
“throw that in the trash”
I can't throw “that” away
it's your letter
written
in green ink
I can't throw love
in the trash
 
the sadness of departures
packing the suitcase
the last walk
the last sip of mineral water
 
I take a souvenir picture
by the old pump room
 
I pass elderly ladies
three of them
their thinning hair
purple silver red
the last the most fashionable these days
under the “dictatorship of the hairstylists”
 
in my youth
ladies of that age were called
better halves matrons old dears
caught in webs of wrinkles
painted and beribboned
 
I stand on the footbridge
 
I throw into the stream
pieces of the letter
the words “lots of kisses”
“thinking of you”
the white scraps drift away
disappear
the sun sets slowly
the water reddens
I talk to the stream
the stream is never heard
it will never speak
will never utter
the Word
 
[Kudowa Zdrój 1989]
tempus fugit
(a story)
 
 
A cold coming we had of it
Just the worst time of the year
for a journey, and such a long journey
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters
and the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
and the villages dirty and charging high prices . . .
“were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?”
 
Brother Richard's retreat
on the heights
of the fifth floor
is hewn from the slopes of Mount Concrete
outside the window the Akerman Steppe
a thousand hearths
flaring and dying down
 
Brother Richard's retreat
is inaccessible to clowns
to a certain
species of writers “lady artists”
 
before the end of the world
Brother Piotr and I are making a pilgrimage
to Akerman Mountain
mors certa hora incerta
this year we were accompanied
by Caspar Melchior and Balthasar
but our ways parted
on Boniface Street (named after a pope?)
 
We pass Caucasus Street send our greetings
to Prometheus
we wander the labyrinth of roads
at last we reach the place
of magic
(all places in this land are magical)
 
in a mechanical basket
an invisible power sweeps us
to the eighth floor
we drop to the fifth
in the meantime this fateful force
had transformed us regular joes
into angels (fake ones of course)
 
often in our journey
we stray
often the impure force casts
us down to the first floor
to the basement even the laundry room
we ask the natives
about the retreat of the elder
Zossima “no one by that name lives here”
they answer in their Mazovian burr
and do you happen to know
 
which floor Professor
Ryszard Przybylski lives on
they look at us and say
“never heard of him”
 
after a while we stand
in front of a grille
 
the grille rises and we are inside
death cell no. 20
which (like a slab of honey)
is fashioned from thousands of books
we smile say nothing
un-eloquently
 
Ryszard cups his hand
round his ear speak louder
since yesterday my hearing's been de-teriorating
 
we exchange a few indifferent
words on the subject of angels
which as “subtle beings” were incorporated
into the pictures of Master Jerzy of Kraków
several such subtle beings
hover about Brother Ryszard's head
when he sleeps his un-easy sleep
 
brother you slept through the birth
of a new Guardian Angel
the Holy Angel of Poland
 
I see surprise dis-belief
on Ryszard's face
a monument has already been designed
there's a foundation a nomination a jury
things got so silent you could hear a pin drop

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