new poems Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  the professor’s knife

  the professor’s knife

  Dawn Day and Night with a Red Rose

  gateway

  Ghost Ship

  the mystery of the poem

  rain in Kraków

  gray zone

  cobweb

  gray zone

  Regression in die Ursuppe

  I know nothing about you

  Oriole

  alarm clock

  there’s a monument

  conversation with Herr Scardanelli

  the poet’s other mystery

  The Mystery of the Poetry Reading

  Too Bad

  Done In

  The Philosopher’s Secret

  additional uses for books

  why do I write?

  March 21 2001–World Poetry Day

  poet in applesauce

  him too

  a cold in China

  Bad Music

  the spilling of blood

  Escape of the Two Little Piggies

  The Weeping Superpower

  building the Tower of Bauble

  exit

  philosopher’s stone

  words

  landslide

  my old Guardian Angel

  golden thoughts against a black background

  à la Wyspiański

  such is the master

  fairy tale

  finger to the lips

  the last conversation

  heart in mouth

  poor Stachura the poet

  labyrinths

  Ashurbanipal killing a wounded lion

  eternal return . . .

  philosophers

  what Aquinas saw

  learning to walk

  Der Zauberer The Magician

  luxury

  July 14 2004–in the night

  before an unknown woman

  in a guesthouse

  letter in green ink

  tempus fugit

  knowledge

  searching for keys

  conversation between father and son about killing time

  we’re building bridges

  you can’t scare me

  I rub my eyes

  mini universe

  the wheels are going round

  speech conversation dialogue

  three erotics

  rhinoceros

  embarrassment

  poetry graveyard

  recent poems

  so what if it’s a dream

  farewell to Raskolnikov

  depressions II

  depressions VII

  The Gates of Death

  Notes

  Copyright Page

  the professor’s knife

  the professor’s knife

  I

  THE TRAINS

  a freight train

  cattle cars

  a long string

  passing through fields and woods

  green meadows

  grasses and wildflowers

  so quietly the buzzing of bees can be heard

  passing through mists

  golden buttercups

  marsh marigolds harebells

  forget-me-nots

  Vergissmeinnicht

  this train

  will never depart

  from my memory

  the pen rusts

  flies off turning lovely in the light

  of awoken spring

  Robigus the almost unknown

  demon of corrosion–a second-rank god–

  consumes tracks rails

  locomotives

  the pen rusts

  flies off sways rises

  above the earth like a lark

  a rusty

  smudge against the blue

  crumbles

  earthwards

  flies off

  to warm lands

  Robigus

  who in antiquity

  ate metals

  –though he never touched gold–

  consumes keys

  and locks

  swords plowshares knives

  guillotine blades axes

  rails that run

  parallel

  never meeting

  a young woman

  flag in hand

  gives a signal

  then disappears

  into oblivion

  toward the end of the war

  a gold train left Hungary

  left for the unknown

  “gold”? the name was given

  by American officers

  mixed up in the Affair

  they knew nothing

  had heard nothing

  besides they’re dying off

  gold trains amber rooms

  sunken continents

  Noah’s ark

  maybe my Hungarian friends

  know something about the train

  maybe its Kursbuch survived

  its last schedule

  from besieged Budapest

  I stand in the last car

  of the Inter Regnum–a train

  to Berlin

  and I hear a child nearby

  exclaiming

  “Look, the tree’s running away! . . .

  into the woods . . .”

  the engine carries the children away

  I open my book

  a poem by Norwid

  I am building

  a bridge

  to link the past

  with the future

  The past is today,

  but a little further on . . .

  Beyond the wheels a village is there

  Not just somewhere

  Where people have never gone!

  freight trains

  cattle cars

  the color of liver and blood

  long strings

  crammed with banal Evil

  banal fear

  despair

  banal children women

  girls

  in the springtime of life

  you hear that cry

  for a single sip

  a single sip of water

  all of humanity calls

  for a single sip

  of banal water

  I am building

  a bridge to link the past

  with the future

  the rails run

  parallel

  the trains fly past

  like black birds

  they end their flight

  in a fiery oven

  from which no

  song rises

  into the empty sky

  the train ends

  its journey

  turns into

  a monument

  across fields meadows woods

  across mountains valleys

  it races ever more quietly

  the stone train

  stands

  over the abyss

  if it is ever brought to life by cries

  of hatred

  from racists nationalists

  fundamentalists

  it will crash like an avalanche

  onto humanity

  not onto “humanity”!

  onto people

  II

  COLUMBUS’ EGG

  years later Mieczysław and I

  are sitting at breakfast

  the 20th century is ending

  I cut bread on a board

  spread butter

  add a pinch of salt

  “Tadzio, you eat too much bread . . .”

  I smile I like bread

  “you know” I reply

  “a slice of fresh bread

  a slice a crust

  with butter

>   or lard with crackling

  and a little pepper”

  Mietek raises his eyes to heaven

  I bite the crust

  I know! salt is unhealthy

  and bread is unhealthy

  (white bread!)

  and sugar! that’s death . . .

  remember “sugar fortifies”?!

  I think that was Waṅkowicz’s

  Waṅkowicz . . . Waṅkowicz

  we were a “world power”

  sugar no longer fortifies . . .

  do you fancy a soft-boiled egg

  asks Mieczysław

  if you’re having one I will

  an egg for breakfast sets you up

  Mieczysław is standing at the stove

  Tadzio! don’t talk to me

  while I’m boiling the eggs

  why not . . .

  just because! . . . now I’ve gone and forgotten

  how many minutes they’ve been boiling

  don’t you have a watch or clock or something

  a timepiece I mean we’re entering

  the 21st century there are supermarkets internets

  there are egg timers

  or whatever they’re called

  in modern households

  in Germany

  they have all kinds of gadgets clocks

  that chime send signals give warnings!

  they have these special devices

  in which you can boil a whole egg

  without the shell

  in the kitchen they have microwaves or maybe it’s

  short waves it’s all a mystery

  to me one day Mietek we’ll be eating

  virtual eggs with no yolk

  because yolks are unhealthy

  not us but our grandchildren

  Tadzio! you have to understand that boiling

  an egg requires attention

  concentration even

  it’ll probably be overdone

  the Germans now the Germans are mechanized

  mechanical eggs

  mechanical or metal

  music not something for us

  so then?!

  what?

  what do you mean what

  how’s your egg

  let’s see

  you taught me

  how to open an egg

  I used to tap the shell with a spoon

  but you cut the top off

  with a single decisive

  slice of the knife

  of course with the egg in the shell

  you won’t make a mess with spoons and fingernails

  how’s yours?

  mine’s good

  not too hard not too soft

  what was it you did . . . before you put the egg

  in the water

  I saw you pricking it

  with something sharp . . . a needle?

  I’d never seen that method

  before . . .

  I knew it! mine’s hard-boiled

  I think you’re using too much salt

  well you know a soft-boiled egg

  without pepper or salt . . .

  there are certain principles . . . and as for

  the matter of timing my aunt had

  a way of measuring it a soft-boiled egg is done

  in the time it takes to say three hail marys

  but that’s not a good method for atheists

  says the atheist?

  what atheist . . . have you ever met a real atheist

  or a real nihilist in Poland

  there’ve been plenty

  freethinkers atheists

  materialists communists activists

  marxists even trotskyists

  what do you say to that?!

  I say they were all jumping with impatience

  to join the pilgrimage

  of the cultured and the artistic

  from Warsaw to Częstochowa

  that was always the way here

  everyone had their own Jew or their priest

  everyone contained a Father Robak

  a Jankiel or a Konrad Wallrenrod

  where did Konrad Wallenrod come from?

  I don’t want to worry you but you’ve over-salted it . . .

  you know there are blanks in the memory I know

  listen I cannot for the life of me

  remember how it was with Columbus’ egg

  Columbus stood the egg upright? how did it go

  was it that he stood the egg on the table “on end”

  we should check in Kopaliński

  you have your method and I have mine

  scrambled egg with sausage or bacon

  is out of the question now

  I remember now what Norwid said

  at the Matejko exhibition in Paris

  in 1876 (I think it was) you know for the last two

  years I’ve been immersed in Norwid I intend

  to write a little book

  learning Norwid or learning from Norwid

  Norwid said about one of Matejko’s paintings

  –I’d missed this though I know

  almost all there is to know about Matejko–

  Norwid called it “the scrambled egg of the nation”

  it was Zygmunt’s Bell

  I don’t know where the painting is now

  from the Palais de l’Industrie (in 1873)

  Scrambled egg of the nation! between

  ourselves neither Europe nor America knows

  what real scrambled egg is like

  that’s the truth . . . but how’s it going with Norwid

  it’s not going . . . or rather it’s going ploddingly

  Art is like a flag on the tower of human labor

  he’s extraordinary . . .

  III

  SHADES

  in the afternoon we visited

  Hania’s grave

  Hania passed away five years ago

  Mieczysław was left on his own

  Robigus the rust demon

  covers the past with rust

  covers words and eyes

  the smiles

  of the dead

  the pen

  we walk further to the tomb

  of Bronia Przybosiowa

  her funeral was attended

  by daughters and grandchildren

  from Paris New York

  Julian wanted the elder daughter

  to be a gardener an orchard-keeper

  he probably dreamed that in his old

  age he’d have his own little apple tree

  and would write

  avant-garde poems

  in the shade of the apple

  in the shade of the tree

  that he would continue

  his profession–the profession of Czarnolas

  but

  metropolis mass machine

  brought the avant-garde

  an unpleasant surprise

  turned into a trap

  the transports set off

  freight cars and cattle cars

  laden with banalized evil

  set off from the east

  west

  south and north

  freight trains

  crammed with banal fear

  banal despair

  to this day the faces

  of old women

  are streaked with banal tears

  after the war miraculous images wept

  and so did living

  women

  figures wept people wept

  IV

  THE DISCOVERY OF THE KNIFE

  Mieczysław in a letter to me

  from 1998

  after I’d asked him

  where the knife came from

  whether he’d made it himself

  found it

  stolen it

  dug it up

  (the iron age)

  whether it fell from the sky

  (miracles do happen)

  Mieczysław:

/>   I thought some more

  about that knife of mine

  made from the hoop of a barrel.

  It was kept in the hem

  of your striped prison uniform,

  because they confiscated things

  and it could cost you dearly . . .

  And so its function

  was not only practical

  but much more complex

  (we should talk about it some more) . . .

  Robigus coats the short iron knife

  with rust

  and slowly consumes it

  I saw it for the first time

  on the Professor’s desk

  in the middle of the 20th century

  strange knife–I thought

  neither a paper knife

  nor a potato peeler

  nor a knife for fish or meat

  it lay between Matejko and Rodakowski

  between Kantor Jaremianka and Stern