Here and now
Try swapping
"here" and "now"
to
"there" and "then"
and suddenly you'll bend in half and bend over
not to tie your shoelaces
but so that you won't be hit by
low-flying bullets
Your city doesn't have to be called Mielec or Kielce
because it can be called Kabul Lugansk or Baghdad
and the trees growing near your house
which from a distance look like poplars
up close turn out to be cypresses
every puddle on your street
reddening in the setting sun
may turn out to be a bloodstain
It doesn't matter
that instead of potatoes
for dinner today you will have a handful of rice
and sour sheep's milk instead of cow's milk
but the house in which you will live there and then
will consist of only one brick
that remains of this house
When you take it in your hands
and squeeze it tightly
sounds will crumble out of it
fossilized
like ammonites in a lump of limestone
or insects in amber:
moans of pain
whispers of lovers
children's cries
sobs of men and women
Squeeze that brick tighter
and you will feel other people's sweat and tears
And you will see that you have someone else's blood on your hands
You are guilty
so don't say
that you couldn't be
neither "there" nor "then"
since you were and are
exactly: "here and now"
Because in fact
there is no "here"
nor any "now"
that exist simultaneously
Wet work
It started to rain
Drops
like fingertips
run over the cobwebs
like the strings of a harp
and drum steadily
like sticks
hitting
on the carapaces of cockchafers and beetles
And half an hour earlier
there was not a single cloud in the sky
and the sun was shining
Exactly
half an hour earlier
when we were leaving the house
she said
that it was about to start raining
And what now, what now?
I thought of a pile
but who would walk in this rain
and pick up the branches
which are already wet
and are unlikely to want to burn
It is too far to the well and the lake from here
and the puddles
still are rather too shallow
I don't even have a knife
and I rarely go out for a walk with an axe
So there is nothing left now
but this wet job
just to take home
and wait over there
until it stops
Anchor
Beech tree growing in front of the house turned grey overnight
The whitened and swollen leaves that looked like tufts of cotton
up close turned out to be shreds of canvas after the sails were torn off
The beech trunk turned out to be a mast
attached to a deck sunken underground
I scraped away the soil and my hands plunged into the sea sand
I sifted it through my fingers fishing out a few tiny shells and ambers
Deeper I felt a thick beech root
which turned out to be a ship's rope
I began to pull it towards me
feeling such a weight as if I were pulling out a net filled with fish
until I heard a creak
and the flap leading below deck lifted slightly
Its planks underneath were warm and sweaty like leather
but I saw no one
only a triangle of light
with its thin end hooked to the edge of the porthole
with a wide one falling softly on the planks after the deck
on which the diluted image was spreading
I spotted a stretch of beach
growing in the depths of banana trees and palm trees
a few clay huts with roofs made of leaves and straw
a few black children bathing by the shore
This image like a spider web
it clothed me more and more tightly and pulled me under
I defended myself
but my fingers like anchors helplessly tore only the air
I cried out to god in a language that was completely foreign to me
which god surely did not understand either
I heard only the rhythmic beats of the drums
that pulsated in my ears and temples
like in Morse code
arranging themselves first into letters and then into whole words and sentences
but the only thing I was able to understand from all of them
was only silence
squeezed and crushed between the words
Linden Cemetery
It's only September and I can already feel the tentacles of November on my face
The chill has the smell of onions and potatoes roasting in the fire
It squeezes my eyelids like lemons and drains them of sour tears
I can smell naphthalene from old coats
The stench of burning rubber from leather jackets
Pulled from closets for All Saints' Day
Every year at my parents' grave I meet the same aunts
With their cotton candy-clad grandchildren
The glow over the Linden Cemetery always reminds me of
Burning Warsaw after the uprising in the forty-fourth
Although I don't remember it, I regret a little
That it will not be given to me to bleed in a trench or on a barricade
Or at most to fall under a truck or throw myself under a train
Actually I do not know why I wander every year in the Linden Cemetery
Where I meet the living no different from the dead
After all, both look the same in dreams and in memories
One and the other are remembered just as long or forgotten just as easily
And what I'm writing here doesn't make sense anyway, so maybe in the end
There will be something about candles that look just like the lights in the car
White is reversing yellow warning and red stop
And on this stop we can end it
Stone in the Heaven
Stone on stone
is a prayer
not a church
because this is exactly how
stones pray
God is a stone
in stone
has a stony soul
has a heart of stone
Stone after death
does not go to heaven
A stone in heaven
after death
would feel bad
He would feel that he is burdening heaven
Heaven would be a burden to him
The stone does not believe
in no god
Who is not all
of stone
And the God who is in heaven
is only Satan
who tempts the stones
to fly
for the Stone
is a sin
mortal
after which the Stone
will not go to heaven
because the Stone in heaven
would feel bad
since it does not even gravitate towards heaven
but still
is a burden for Heaven
Leslaw Nowara was born in Gliwice (Poland) in 1963. He is a lawyer by education, a graduate of the Silesian University in Katowice.
He writes his works in Polish and publishes them regularly in the most important literary periodicals in Poland, but in translations into other languages they have also been published in Great Britain, Ireland, Australia (in his own English translations), as well as in Ukraine, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
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