Map
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a conversation held
with the lamp switched off;
and if only once
to stumble on a stone,
end up drenched in one downpour or another,
mislay your keys in the grass;
and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;
and to keep on not knowing
something important.
List
I’ve made a list of questions
to which I no longer expect answers,
since it’s either too early for them,
or I won’t have time to understand.
The list of questions is long,
and takes up matters great and small,
but I don’t want to bore you,
and will just divulge a few:
What was real
and what scarcely seemed to be
in this auditorium,
stellar and substellar,
requiring tickets for entrance
and exit alike;
What about the whole live world,
which I won’t manage
to compare with any other living world;
What will the papers
write about tomorrow;
When will wars cease,
and what will replace them;
Whose third finger now wears
the ring
stolen from me—lost;
What’s the place of free will,
which manages to be and not to be
simultaneously;
What about those scores of people—
did we really know each other;
What was M. trying to tell me
when she could no longer speak;
Why did I take bad things
for good ones
and what would it take
to keep from doing it again?
There are certain questions
I jotted down just before sleep.
On waking
I couldn’t make them out.
Sometimes I suspect
that it’s a real code,
but that question, too,
will take its leave one day.
Everything
Everything—
a smug and bumptious word.
It should be written in quotes.
It pretends to miss nothing,
to gather, hold, contain, and have.
While all the while it’s just
a shred of gale.
COLON
2005
Absence
A few minor changes
and my mother might have married
Mr. Zbigniew B. from Zduńska Wola.
And if they’d had a daughter—she wouldn’t have been me.
Maybe with a better memory for names and faces,
and any melody heard once.
Adept at telling one bird from another.
With perfect grades in chemistry and physics,
and worse in Polish,
but secretly writing poems
instantly more interesting than mine.
A few minor changes
and my father might at that same time have married
Miss Jadwiga R. from Zakopane.
And if they’d had a daughter—she wouldn’t have been me.
Maybe standing her ground more stubbornly.
Plunging headfirst into deep water.
Susceptible to group emotions.
Always seen in several spots at once,
but rarely with a book, more often in the yard
playing kickball with the boys.
They might even have met
in the same school, the same room.
But not kindred spirits,
no affinities,
at opposite ends of class photos.
Stand here, girls
—the photographer would call—
shorter girls in front, tall girls behind.
And big smiles when I say cheese.
But one more head count,
that’s everyone?
—Yes sir, that’s all.
ABC
I’ll never find out now
what A. thought of me.
If B. ever forgave me in the end.
Why C. pretended everything was fine.
What part D. played in E.’s silence.
What F. had been expecting, if anything.
Why G. forgot when she knew perfectly well.
What H. had to hide.
What I. wanted to add.
If my being nearby
meant anything
for J. and K. and the rest of the alphabet.
Highway Accident
They still don’t know
what happened on the highway
half an hour ago.
On their watches
it’s just the same old time,
afternoonish, Thursdayish, September.
Someone is draining macaroni.
Someone is raking leaves.
Squealing children race around the table.
Someone’s cat deigns to be patted.
Someone is crying—
as always when bad Diego
betrays Juanita on TV.
Someone is knocking—
nothing, the neighbor with a borrowed frying pan.
A phone rings deep in the apartment—
just telemarketing for now.
If someone were to stand at the window
and look out at the sky,
he might catch sight of clouds
drifting over from the accident.
Torn and tattered, to be sure,
but that’s business as usual for them.
The Day After—Without Us
The morning is expected to be cool and foggy.
Rainclouds
will move in from the west.
Poor visibility.
Slick highways.
Gradually as the day progresses
high pressure fronts from the north
make local sunshine likely.
Due to winds, though, sometimes strong and gusty,
sun may give way to storms.
At night
clearing across the country,
with a slight chance of precipitation
only in the southeast.
Temperatures will drop sharply,
while barometric readings rise.
The next day
promises to be sunny,
although those still living
should bring umbrellas.
An Occurrence
Sky, earth, morning,
the time is eight fifteen.
Peace and quiet
in the savanna’s yellowed grass.
An ebony tree in the distance
with evergreen leaves
and spreading roots.
A sudden uproar in the blissful stillness.
Two creatures who want to live suddenly bolt.
An antelope in violent flight,
a breathless hungry lioness behind her.
Their chances are equal for the moment.
The antelope may even have the edge.
And if not for the root
that thrusts from the ground,
if not for the stumble
of one of four hooves,
if not for the split second
of disrupted rhythm
that the lioness seizes
with one prolonged leap—
On the question of guilt,
nothing, only silence.
The sky, circulus coelestis, is innocent.
Terra nutrix, breadwinner earth, is innocent.
Tempus fugitivum, time, is innocent.
The antelope, gazella dorcas, is innocent.
The lioness, leo massaicus, is innocent.
The ebony tree, diospyros mespiliformis, is innocent.
And the observer who watches through binoculars
is, in such instances,
homo sapiens i
nnocens.
Consolation
Darwin.
They say he read novels to relax.
But only certain kinds:
nothing that ended unhappily.
If he happened on something like that,
enraged, he flung the book into the fire.
True or not,
I’m ready to believe it.
Scanning in his mind so many times and places,
he’d had enough of dying species,
the triumphs of the strong over the weak,
the endless struggles to survive,
all doomed sooner or later.
He’d earned the right to happy endings,
at least in fiction
with its microscales.
Hence the indispensable silver lining,
the lovers reunited, the families reconciled,
the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded,
fortunes regained, treasures uncovered,
stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways,
good names restored, greed daunted,
old maids married off to worthy parsons,
troublemakers banished to other hemispheres,
forgers of documents tossed down the stairs,
seducers scurrying to the altar,
orphans sheltered, widows comforted,
pride humbled, wounds healed,
prodigal sons summoned home,
cups of sorrow tossed into the ocean,
hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation,
general merriment and celebration,
and the dog Fido,
gone astray in the first chapter,
turns up barking gladly
in the last.
The Old Professor
I asked him about the old days,
when we were still so young,
naïve, hotheaded, silly, green.
Some of that remains, except the young part,
he replied.
I asked if he still knew for sure
what was good and bad for humankind.
The most deadly of all illusions,
he replied.
I asked about the future,
did he still see it clearly.
I’ve read too many history books,
he replied.
I asked about the photo,
the framed one, on his desk.
Here and gone. Brother, cousin, sister-in-law,
my wife, my daughter on her lap,
the cat in my daughter’s arms,
and the cherry tree blossoming, and above it
an unidentified bird flying
—he replied.
I asked if he was happy sometimes.
I work,
he replied.
I asked about his friends, did he still have them.
A few former assistants,
who have their own former assistants,
Ludmila, who looks after the house,
someone very close, but far away,
two ladies from the library, both smiling,
little Grześ across the hall and Marcus Aurelius,
he replied.
I asked about his health, his state of mind.
They won’t give me coffee, vodka, cigarettes,
won’t let me carry heavy memories and objects.
I just pretend that I can’t hear them
—he replied.
I asked about the garden and the garden bench.
When the night is clear, I watch the sky.
I can’t get enough of it,
so many points of view,
he replied.
Perspective
They passed like strangers,
without a word or gesture,
she off to the store,
he heading to his car.
Were they panicked
or distracted,
or forgetting
that for a little while
they’d been in love forever.
There’s no guarantee, though,
that it was them.
Maybe at a distance
but not close up.
I watched them from a window,
but observers from above
are easily mistaken.
She vanished behind glass doors,
he sat behind the wheel
and took off.
Nothing happened, that is,
even if it did.
But sure of what I’d seen
just for a moment,
I try in this chance poem
to persuade you, oh readers,
it was sad.
The Courtesy of the Blind
The poet reads his lines to the blind.
He hadn’t guessed that it would be so hard.
His voice trembles.
His hands shake.
He senses that every sentence
is put to the test of darkness.
He must muddle through alone,
without colors or lights.
A treacherous endeavor
for his poems’ stars,
dawns, rainbows, clouds, their neon lights, their moon,
for the fish so silvery thus far beneath the water
and the hawk so high and quiet in the sky.
He reads—since it’s too late to stop now—
about the boy in a yellow jacket on a green field,