BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ
That night Agnieszka had to find a notepad, call
her old and present friends. To say: she’s not alive, to explain
all the circumstances. Did her hand tremble, her voice crack?
We were sleeping a deep sleep, deep as never before, I told my husband
at dawn.
But it could also have been that
we were watching Berlin Alexanderplatz that night
when Agnieszka draped the night in grey, purple, black.
THE ISLAND
for Grzegorz
Near dawn I observe how light
enters the flat. First there emerge
the contours of the floor, the half-drunk
watermelon nectar that he readied for the swelter.
I stand over my husband tightly wrapped in the covers
checking every now and then if he’s breathing, nudging him lightly.
I’LL ESCAPE WITH HER
My friend was ill, but no one
came to see her.
It was snowing, the footpaths were buried, maybe that’s why
no one found the way to her.
My friend was dying, but no one
knew about it. One December morning
they shovelled the snow from her door, shut off the electricity,
carried out the body.
My friend had her funeral, to which I had to travel
many hours. During the Mass I circled the church
tamping down the snow. I wanted to call my husband,
ask him, Help me open the casket,
I’ll escape with her.
Then someone I hadn’t seen for a long time wanted to embrace me.
I said: I don’t do such things.
WHITE SONG
It’s August, people are bearing bales of hay, children
crouching to pee. Dogs bark at growling engines
and bicycles. The neighbour lady chases us out of the cool house
and into the very eye of the summer heat.
It’s August, there was never any key
to the addition made over into a washroom.
Mr Darek, putting up the panelling,
enters without knocking.
It’s August and for the third time in our lives we dream of Marysia,
our schoolmate. A light seeps under the washroom door
and an immobile shadow appears, leather work boots.
Translated by Charles S. Kraszewski
Selected samples
She climbed her first peaks in a headscarf at a time when women in the mountains were treated by climbers as an additional backpack. It was with her that female alpinism began! She gained recognition in a spectacular way. The path was considered a crossing for madmen. Especially since the tragic accident in 1929, preserved … Continue reading “Halina”
First, Marysia, a student of an exclusive private school in Warsaw’s Mokotów district, dies under the wheels of a train. Her teacher, Elżbieta, tries to find out what really happened. She starts a private investigation only soon to perish herself. But her body disappears, and the only people who have seen anything are Gniewomir, a … Continue reading “Wound”
A young girl, Regina Wieczorek, was found dead on the beach. She was nineteen years old and had no enemies. Fortunately, the culprit was quickly found. At least, that’s what the militia think. Meanwhile, one day in November, Jan Kowalski appears at the police station. He claims to have killed not only Regina but also … Continue reading “Penance”
The year is 1922. A dangerous time of breakthrough. In the Eastern Borderlands of the Republic of Poland, Bolshevik gangs sow terror, leaving behind the corpses of men and disgraced women. A ruthless secret intelligence race takes place between the Lviv-Warsaw-Free City of Gdańsk line. Lviv investigator Edward Popielski, called Łysy (“Hairless”), receives an offer … Continue reading “A Girl with Four Fingers”
This question is closely related to the next one, namely: if any goal exists, does life lead us to that goal in an orderly manner? In other words, is everything that happens to us just a set of chaotic events that, combined together, do not form a whole? To understand how the concept of providence … Continue reading “Order and Love”
The work of Józef Łobodowski (1909-1988) – a remarkable poet, prose writer, and translator, who spent most of his life in exile – is slowly being revived in Poland. Łobodowski’s brilliant three- volume novel, composed on an epic scale, concerns the fate of families and orphans unmoored by the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war and … Continue reading “Ukrainian Trilogy: Thickets, The Settlement, The Way Back”
