* * *
don’t laugh at me. where the world ends
New Life begins. nobody trusts
death any more. there is no need
to trust anybody now. what we speak
is already old. New Life
is also getting older. each time
it ends better
translated by Paweł Merecz
* * *
There is a paper on the bench No doubt it’s wet
It’s wet Sports again It’s dark With much strain
I go word by word through the verses Verses Words
Somebody’s words that no one will wish to read any more
Mein Herz ist müde sings the mortally ill Dead
My heart is tired It consents to solutions
improper for a heart Somebody’s heart Soon it will be
wet as well Awful And me leaning over it
lost in reading Although it’s a broad day
and the pedestrians glance at me with laughter
translated by Paweł Merecz
* * *
Rafal was right: phones in Podgórze are good for nothing
and the world has shrunk again: now it’s a handful of raisins
out of which I pick up the best ones. But is it really sure
that anything more will happen? Is it possible at all?
There can’t be more than there just is. This moment,
which seems to me but an presage of
Something, for someone else must stand for All.
And perhaps, no phone will get cheated any more,
ever, though one wouldn’t believe.
translated by Paweł Merecz
Apple
It’s got cold Time to take a warm jacket from the wardrobe
To wrap desire trembling for autonomy
with warm love To fill with warm fat sauce
the empty church of the body With warm Brahms the ears
Sharp rime at every turn But with body in down
with love in heart and even with need for
God by way of an exception transformed in God
you can go now and catch the town cold-handed
Now sitting in the dark surrounded by people
by the clatter of poems by walls suddenly I see
an apple left (in the wardrobe) in the pocket of my autumn coat
: what should I do to remember That it won’t rot there
translated by Paweł Merecz
Tongue
Yep, I love to keep my feet on the type-writer.
Doesn’t matter how I do it, I don’t feel like explaining it to you now;
soft touch of all those tiny keys soothes
my mind suspended at the other end of my frame — like the clatter
of the spinning-wheel restoring order to the brain
of — fictitious as she was — Gretchen. Well yes, I can be only
Faust, yet maybe later. So you write your poems
with your feet? Yep, I write them with my feet, I write them with my
arse. My arse is a great artist, as used to say
the leaders of those parties. My spleen is like jelly
in my belly. I’ve been so alone since the crack of dawn. For so long
I haven’t written anything in this tongue. Nothing in nobody’s mouth.
Kraków, 28 April 1994
translated by Paweł Merecz & Adam Wiedemann
Poem Of Intervention
it’s war again war poems are again and even
I dream of war so I almost know how it’s like
I lost my scissors this goddamned miłosz
was uncorking wine yesterday it’s always the same
lapse of attention and I cannot find’em
in any of those five or six places they should be
I light a cigarette I do so many cancerigenic things
boys sing dona nobis pacem in a while
I’ll be biting my nails furiously I think
translated by Paweł Merecz
Good Manners
We are all too kind If we were
less less we would hurt one another
Less and less all the time Why it’s so little of you?
I owe something to you It’s
my oversight
I make fun of myself (too many
guests at the party)
I can wake up no more It’s already the past
Translucent Look at it Can you see me?
I‘m sitting under the table listening Under the couch
an ink paddle Look: I am all blue
Nobody to apologise to Nothing to remember
Nobody to look at One gets trembles
We do live No secret
Somebody was kind enough
translated by Paweł Merecz
