Poems

Blue Hour. Skagen

Up the beach to Grenen, where two seas

wrestle belly to belly.

Between light and night

sky and water merge

into one cool streak.

Out of Krøyer’s painting steps a woman

in a pale dress.

The wet hem pulls her toward the earth,

salt seals the folds of the waves

that drag into the deep whatever breathes:

the woman, the red dog, the wind

combing the dune grass.

From Before the War. Szczecin–Warsaw

sketched into the moment with a thin stroke

she: fair curls set with a hot iron,

skin like paper, the kind painters love,

puffed sleeves, a sweater in muted red,

a gaze from under half-lowered lids,

a stone-set ring on her fourth finger,

behind it the wedding band – one vow keeping watch over the other.

he: brown-haired, broad in the shoulders, a moustache like antennae,

a signet ring on his index finger,

olive trousers, a rust-coloured belt,

the striped shirt tucked under the buckle.

he swings canvas rucksacks onto the rack,

and from the bag slung at his shoulder

a little fox of a dog puts out its head.

Were the girls of the Warsaw Uprising like this?

Did the young men hold themselves this calmly?

In my mind I leaf the course of events back

like a page of the book she is reading,

deliciously propped against her husband’s thigh.

Symmetry. Cluj-Napoca–Warsaw

every hour has its mirror

bedside lamps on either side

two pillows, in case someone came back

after take-off she stares out a long while

as if half her breath had stayed behind

two wings, two sides of fate

only the defect can’t be copied

like a fingerprint, an error in an equation

beneath the great cross a figure bent low

fingers and words losing their way in prayer

dry her tears, God of all poor creatures

no one walks a whole life with a wet face

leave only a proof of existence

– a runnel on the cheek

Outside Tallinn

fighter jets rip the sky apart.

only exercises – we repeat it, voice over voice,

so fear doesn’t drive us out of our minds.

from tiny seeds: people, flowers, trees.

we grow downward, practise falling.

I wanted to give a home and gave fear,

taught not prayers but the names of psychotropics.

who will start a war? have a child? plant a forest?

We follow tracks already fading,

looking for a stone, a railing, a stranger’s shoulder –

anything

steps to the church. Kniazie

footworn

trodden

chipped

slicked

to a shine

lines of prayer

repeated

a thousand times

lose their edge

no handrail

prayed through

the words climb

a stone off the neck

The Speaker

So that no one thinks

it’s the flesh-and-blood author slipping through the poem,

that he’s the one moved by the shadow of leaves

on the south wall,

that it’s his heart counting the hours to dawn,

that to his fears he’s added the one about the vanishing bees,

that autumn scatters him

and now he’s striking the high notes

because he couldn’t make autumn stay,

that he’s the one they cast

off – cast to the world to be devoured,

that he feeds his loneliness like fish in a pond,

that he checks tomorrow’s weather

as if global salvation depended on it,

that his silence is passing itself off as metaphor,

that two important words follow him around

while he looks for someone to hear them,

that he touches up his life in the poem,

that he has switched to flight mode –

which has nothing to do with flying.

Dolce Vita. Lake Garda

All of civilisation

dies tonight,

with no chance of rebirth

– said the most important one of all,

from across the ocean.

On the white tablecloth

a glass of Aperol,

a slice of orange.

Magnolia petals,

led by the eye,

fall in no hurry.

A front-row seat:

turquoise to the horizon,

cypresses and church towers

aimed at the sky,

for better, the bells,

for worse, the bells.

The light of the olive groves

knows more than one ending.

the squirrel

it comes to the garden, always the same hour.

stops a few steps off. Watches.

the offered nut it eats or buries.

one gives, one wants to take.

not like a dog, not like a cat,

yet the daily meetings

let you think of friendship.

then it runs across the road

and vanishes into the tall pines.

in the morning sun

I see her up close:

the fox-red of her fur passing

into living red.

on the asphalt. still.

or she runs on through the poem.

THE JOURNEY

I’m setting out on a long journey. To warm countries.

Here the drops still run down the spines of the roofs.

Winds howl in the crevices. The madness is rising.

I am sunk in fog. Like most of the world.

In fog where demons hatch at night.

Your voice, your scent, your touch are still too near

for me to stay. Like a beggarwoman I piece prayers together,

I call on time to save me, knowing it will destroy me.

Patiently, like morphine.

LETTER FROM JASTARNIA TO VAN GOGH

The port at Jastarnia is small.

On one side ships and the smell of old fish,

on the other patched fishing boats – toy boats,

blue as the sky and yellow as sand on sunny days.

On each a tiny cabin with room for one.

On wooden plaques the charm “God with us”

– how many storms has it seen them through?

You would love this place, Mr Van Gogh,

though you fled your native north for the south, for France.

It’s Holland with colour added – you said,

looking at the vineyards on the slopes, the olive groves,

the transparent sky.

In Jastarnia it is bright. Light and water.

From the Bay to the open sea

is a ten-minute walk at most.

You could paint the fishermen, their rough movements,

and their children with their too-white hair.

You could paint the gulls – shrill companions of men –

or the tongues of sun on the Bay.

After a while you would settle,

easel and all, into this harbour scene,

as I have now, with your Letters to your brother.

Let us try to love our lot

such as it is – you wrote to Theo,

half pastor, half artist.

Clods of earth, yellow grass, soft wheat,

almond trees thick with pink blossom,

fleshy sunflowers, cypresses, austere rooms,

postmen, cobblers, beautiful Arlésiennes.

With coffee, absinthe and madness you arrived at your yellows.

In the local brothels you numbed the sadness,

recklessly spending the small allowance from your brother.

You wanted to believe that illness sometimes heals.

Did you know that loneliness kills?

A FORCE DE LA NATURE

To be couch grass.

To press into every detail of the wall,

every crack,

every corner of the landscape.

Eternal and mute,

roots reaching out

in all directions.

To have its strength,

its will to endure.

The courage to go on growing

despite the torn parts.

I LIKE TO THINK OF YOU

I like to think of you. You walk the canyon of the city,

loneliness tucked under your arm like a rolled-up newspaper.

In the hazy light of an orange street lamp

the leaves are dancing. Wild is the wind today.

We were still asleep when, in the middle of a crowded street,

two trees sprang up. You and I.

You say love isn’t always sad.

Love is wild. Like the wind.

I CAN’T SLEEP, MY LOVE

I can’t sleep, my love. I stand at the window:

above the garrets nestled in the deep black of night,

along the wine-red rooftops of the tenements

walk the women torn from your dreams. Naked.

Silent as cats. And pale as the moon.

Who else sees them here? Will they go back now

into the arms of the man who conjured them?

Goddesses of dreams, lovers who vanish by morning,

leaving the scent of spilled hair –

on the pillow. On the eyelids. On the tips

of numbed fingers.

IN THE RECTANGLE

In the rectangle of the hospital window

as in a cropped frame

trees – matchsticks in straight rows

no roots, no crowns

no beginning, no end

each day sterile

as indifference.

In the rectangle of existence

here and now

all that counts

is my body.

Time – the clack of nurses’ shoes.

People are born

People die

TIME

Autumn like a forbidden love.

In the rustling leaves

more hope than farewells.

I have never wandered far enough

to find myself.

You can turn an hourglass over

and watch the grains of sand

run through again

A Walk

A deserted little town, or the set of a film.

Open gates wait for the householders to return.

Well-fed cats in patches of sun, eyes half closed.

Happiness, says Epicurus, is talking philosophy

with a friend in your own garden.

Or maybe happiness is a morning walk

where you’re caught, as in amber –

especially when all around

lies Byzantine splendour. Gold and purple.

So much death this autumn – says M.

May the poems, like blazing lindens and maples,

stand against the darkness.

Plato on the Warsaw–Hamburg Route

How did he know we sit facing the wall,

shadows in the half-dark, life behind our backs –

did he know the weights at our ankles?

the pain of the first breath after looking back?

I see him on the plane, window seat.

Winter is ending. The bones of the earth crack.

As we break through the clouds he narrows his hazel eyes:

so this is where all the light of the world has been hiding?

On the sly I watch him drift off in his seat,

hands on the armrest – the little finger twitching,

as if playing, or splintering ice beneath his eyelids.

Morning Coffee. Strzeniówka

I open my eyes – after this night nothing looks like yesterday,

someone has drawn back the curtain: on another continent

a swaying scaffold, a crowd with torches beneath it.

a wave is rising, tomorrow it will be at your feet,

at mine, the neighbour’s. in a storm each wave

is higher than the last – or are we a dream

that dreams us all at once?

M. comes in through the locked door,

unmindful of his nonexistence,

eats iced biscuits – one, another, a third,

says, mouth full, that even death can be survived.

breath. berlin-warsaw

scarlett johansson is the highest-paid star

while the army of her accountants and lawyers

adds multiplies the rows of dollar digits,

I count the shadows on the ceiling as they spread –

an echo of our whispers in hotel rooms.

scarlett johansson is the highest-paid star

the age-old alchemy turns an angel’s smile into matter.

what will she do with the money when the war breaks out?

you say safety is not safes, not gold,

but big hands like yours. love doesn’t ask

for the names of stars, for wardrobes to hide in,

for magazines full of weapons. it is between the fingers like water

that knows every outlet.

scarlett johansson is the highest-paid star

does anyone else see her smile in the puddles,

unspoken words are drowning there

I touch them with my tongue, test how much truth they hold

and how much is promise a size too big. your shadow flits past

like the landscapes on the berlin-warsaw line.

scarlett johansson is the highest-paid star

count me instead of gold – you say

we are together in the aged apple tree,

in the crumbs on the table, in the jar

of bitter-orange marmalade, not quite shut,

time bends to give us one more moment,

if chaos breaks out, if the clocks stop,

we will count breaths.