Poetry as a cemetary.
A cemetery of faces, hands, gestures. A cemetery of clouds, colors of the sky, a graveyard of winds, branches, jasmine (the jasmine from Swidnik), the statue of a saint from Marseilles, a single poplar over the Black Sea, a graveyard of moments and hours, burnt offerings of words. Eternal rest be yours in words, eternal rest, eternal light of recollection.
Cemeteries of sunsets, running with arms spread, a child’s short dress, winter, snowstorms, footsteps on the stairs, tears, a letter with a serious confession, silver faces, the shoemaker’s stall, parting, pain, sorrow. Everything preserved, buried in amber tombs of words. The sea, grief trickling from someone’s eyes, parting; faith in God, arrivals and departures, loneliness heavier than death, sweet as death. Anxiety and peace. The streets of cities. A monk’s belly bumps up against a tourist in catacombs. First communion. First love. First storm at sea. First night.
A dog’s eyes, eyes of the beloved, unclosed eyes of a dead man, glazed with one tear. Barrows of memory. Mummies, the amputated hands and feet of statues. A deer emerges from the grove, stops and stares. A footbridge across the river in the flutter of geese and bare feet, flowering fields. Grandfather’s death, his moustache in the coffin. A dog’s howl.
Since the priest doesn’t come running with his holy oil every time a leaf falls. The collective grave of childhood, where apple cores lie, little skeletons, a dead friend. Basia Bartmanska, her father’s angry brow, the grandfather’s hand given to kiss, the longing for holiness, nettles, a country outhouse, spiders, boys’ tickling on a suburb’s dark steps.
That sun and that rain, mama, mama, that sky and trees. The springs are ever more tightly wound, I can’t turn them to the end.
My mother, who dies in my childhood dream, my mother who dies and I watch as she dies, and I remain alive, whole, almost indifferent.
Kindhearted Mother, protectoress of people.
And so many lives, like the rings of a tree, like geological strata. I lost God in the darkness of my twenty years. Saint Anthony, patron of lost things, help me find my lost Lord God! Saint Anthony, stand in the courtyard and gather alms for the poor.
Anna Kamieńska, "Industrious Amazement: A Notebook"; tr. Clare Cavanagh
Cemeteries of sunsets, running with arms spread, a child’s short dress, winter, snowstorms, footsteps on the stairs, tears, a letter with a serious confession, silver faces, the shoemaker’s stall, parting, pain, sorrow. Everything preserved, buried in amber tombs of words. The sea, grief trickling from someone’s eyes, parting; faith in God, arrivals and departures, loneliness heavier than death, sweet as death. Anxiety and peace. The streets of cities. A monk’s belly bumps up against a tourist in catacombs. First communion. First love. First storm at sea. First night.
A dog’s eyes, eyes of the beloved, unclosed eyes of a dead man, glazed with one tear. Barrows of memory. Mummies, the amputated hands and feet of statues. A deer emerges from the grove, stops and stares. A footbridge across the river in the flutter of geese and bare feet, flowering fields. Grandfather’s death, his moustache in the coffin. A dog’s howl.
Since the priest doesn’t come running with his holy oil every time a leaf falls. The collective grave of childhood, where apple cores lie, little skeletons, a dead friend. Basia Bartmanska, her father’s angry brow, the grandfather’s hand given to kiss, the longing for holiness, nettles, a country outhouse, spiders, boys’ tickling on a suburb’s dark steps.
That sun and that rain, mama, mama, that sky and trees. The springs are ever more tightly wound, I can’t turn them to the end.
My mother, who dies in my childhood dream, my mother who dies and I watch as she dies, and I remain alive, whole, almost indifferent.
Kindhearted Mother, protectoress of people.
And so many lives, like the rings of a tree, like geological strata. I lost God in the darkness of my twenty years. Saint Anthony, patron of lost things, help me find my lost Lord God! Saint Anthony, stand in the courtyard and gather alms for the poor.
Anna Kamieńska, "Industrious Amazement: A Notebook"; tr. Clare Cavanagh
posted by mh at 6:29 PM
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