Justyna Bargielska
THE TOES OF MY SHOES
Ever since I’ve stopped desiring you, life,
the clearing jeers at the fire, songs
turn off by themselves, but you must know
that I still adore this season of the year.
It still stays light long, but there’s no swelter.
The clearing jeers at the fire, the sun
slips over the surface, and the water
is cold, flies are no longer caught
in the spider silk of Indian summer, as it’s no
longer about enduring, the thing now is
to look or at least glance outside, but still
I adore this season of the year, ’cos what else remains for me.
Although, you know what, no.
Ever since I’ve stopped desiring you, life,
I can gather everything into a parenthesis, and then
polish it ad infinitum, so it will look
like a bowl on which one serves
the heads of prophets, and not like a parenthesis.
That’s what I do and this too I adore, I adore.
THE BLUE DANUBE
Quite simply we made love,
on the tenth floor. Someone down below was playing “The Blue Danube”.
We ought to toss him a coin – I said.
We went out onto the balcony, naked, trying to hit the man with the squeezebox,
now with a fiver, now two złoty, a fiver again and a tenner in a kerchief
weighted with a stone.
You got bored quickly throwing coins at the artist.
But for a long time thereafter, when you already cared less, I kept throwing,
and throwing.
WHAT’S NEW
It’s Saturday. This past week I pronounced thirteen words.
Hello, thanks, goodbye – to the delivery boy from the market.
I can’t look at you – to the mirror.
Why can’t you love me – to you.
Only the delivery boy replied. Hello and goodbye.
WHERE TO REPORT THIS
He said he doesn’t know me, and we’ve had a child together.
How could I have had his child
if he doesn’t know me? We were sitting in the car
deep in the snow, and I was holding that child in my arms,
and he said he’d introduce me to Edyta and Luiza,
if only I admit that I belong to him –
So I admitted it, and now he says he doesn’t know me.
So I remind him of the apple festival, the first outing
we took our child to.
I remind him of the sacrifice of the man, who was to be macerated
in a tub full of apple cider vinegar until he vanished.
It’s more than true, it’s logical really,
and still he can’t remember. You don’t remember – I ask –
how your son saved that man with the lasers of his eyes
from an unnecessary barbaric martyrdom,
though killing, it’s true, everyone else there?
So you don’t remember. The main thing is I do
and I’ll tell it to everyone who deigns to listen to me.
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”
