"The poet is of no party." Baudelaire
In days, omens and signs were sought – moments in the brain swelled with meaning –
– the shape of the clouds dreamed by chance at night could have seemed like a perusal at noon
and in the evening when the rain murmured on the rooftop –
– already the surprise could be felt somewhere –
(sleep could come along with its childish prayer found disarrayed in the morning)
– or used to head after two strangers
to listen to familiar – (remember?) – conversations –
(in the rain, in the grey weather and wintry evening flowers bloomed lilac with memory)
– in the bends of little streets with no names, would diminish – out of a vague feeling – breath.
– or there used to stand then on the road: –
someone who had a mouth with your smile! – –
- - - - - - - - - - -
They used to take hold of thoughts with their hands,
revitalize eyes with the chill of windowpanes
and convince the self – coldly, that you could be surrounded by walls
it has been forgotten: thoughts, like children, are too, too drunk
– and that they tread mute, circling the wall
– and that they look at you through the wall – –
- - - - - - - - - - -
Until they fell asleep because November came,
because the wind was staggering by the streetlamp: –
days changed on the roads like signs, made it tiresome to wander senselessly
– and peace will already be believed (sun overwhelmed with grey)
– so it was believed: there will already be peace –
– so it was believed: it will exist for a long time – –
- - - - - - - - - - -
When you swear truthfully, as if cutting the lie in half, like a knot, an entanglement,
you can learn from an undivinating conversation:
– on the day that passed without signs you came back!
(someone overturned on the desk by accident
the steel ink in a round blot: –
I will carve from two railroad tracks a serpentine ornament again in the distance.)
- - - - - - - - - - -
Tomorrow will have faded, like yesterday – the clouds pallid, like a canvas.
I will take a blue and shallow crystal in hand so that all’s less gray, sad –
I’ll peer at clouds through the window azure where gilded sculptures glitter;
the clouds do become a blue sky
in which the stars gild vastly.
– – as do Your eyes – –
(Probably You don’t know about it at all, have you even thought of it in a blink?
that you have eyes blue each day is grand to me, a miraculous event –)
6 November 1932
Translated from the Polish by Alex Braslavsky
Came Then
(Today childhood came to me unraveling)
There used to be drawers full of grandma’s keys –
rusty and shiny –
thick, thin –
you could whistle all kinds of songs on them.
Some had the din of heavy bumblebees
some the rumble of a mermaid’s throat,
but most were ones that whissstled high
finnnely – slighttttly
in sillllence,
like mice.
Quick, steely, sonorous, they beat against one another,
the keys to nonexistent, lost, non-doors;
sometimes red from rust,
sometimes mildew green.
(Today childhood came to me in the impossibility of dreaming in sleep)
And then I found the door for the lost key,
because every hour of life had a heavy latch,
and every day had its unlocked intricacy –
lost somewhere a bunch
of mystical keys
upon which I whistled naive ditties –
tiny, maudlin songs – –
(Today childhood came to me unraveling,
(Today childhood came to me in the impossibility of dreaming in sleep)
2 March 1933
Translated from the Polish by Alex Braslavsky