Translated by Jaroslaw J Gajewski
I WOULD WANDER
Now, I would wander endlessly,
In small towns, on unknown roads,
I would drag myself aimlessly,
Starting in the town of Hrubieszow.
From shops full of secrets,
And the strangest collections
In the antiquarian's shop,
To colorful, wonderful fairs,
I would watch life in miniatures.
The sad inns, full of strangers,
Odd-looking faces from a century and a half ago,
Whenever I want, I may leave it,
Not looking back at anything,
Not waiting for anything,
And somewhere, in an empty restaurant,
One winter evening, I want to meet you
For a glass of wine.
We will be happy, sitting at the wooden table,
And talk to each other, at the late winter time,
Then, we will go out into the snow storm
To walk against the wind,
As we always do, as we did before,
Then we part - happily, just with a smile,
Till the next rendezvous - after quite a while.
In prison, Lublin, 1941 TOP
THE STONES
I used to like watching stones,
They are naked, simple like a truth.
Silent rough beings.
Without tears and love - without complaint
Thrown on the vast, wide earth
Stripped yearnings, free from hope
Stand, belonging to nobody, yet with grief
Of their hard eternity
Free from illusion -
Alone in nothingness.
And I sorrowed unwisely over something,
That I might cry among those muted rocks,
That winds chop them up,
Storms are passing by, but they last
And nobody rules over them,
Because they had lived,
And became human hearts.
Ravensbrück, 1941 TOP
THE VISION
Time has stopped,
The depth of silence,
And the lifelessness
Of the cleared forest.
Each of us
It's you - it's me -
Voiceless, charming trees.
Once they touched the sky
With their canopy,
Today, in silence,
Dwarfish miserable lumps -
We thought they were giants.
***
The suffering touched me too early,
I have burned myself out,
I am the bright ash without desire.
Now, only the silence endures dearly,
When I am still standing in the fire.
Ravensbrück 13th April 1942 TOP
THE FOREIGN LAND
Silent rows of grey buildings stand low.
And equally grey skies, the grayness without hope.
Droves of different people in gloom are lost,
Too much hush in the grim and strange canvas.
In the dead emptiness, homesickness drags itself,
Following soundlessness and paleness.
Intense and mute despair, suffocated by emotion,
Wanders in the dark and blind crevices.
Listen, to how unrestrained forests sibilate
beyond it. Are we enduring, existing yet?
Still the same, I don't feel my being,
Don't see, don't follow.
We have not been leaving any trace
More oblivion and hollow,
On the foreign, harsh land.
We had been here and nothing else.
Ravensbrück, 1942 TOP
OUTSIDE THE WINDOW
Outside the window, The wind
Is swinging the happy storm.
But beyond the bars, there is life on the brink.
We are twenty years old; just think
That our night dreams go down the sink.
Yet, it is nothing; what does it look like
In the world, we live in?
* * *
I hide in my heart
The painful bleeding rose,
But, if it is empty,
Would I have remorse? TOP
BEYOND THE BARS IN THE SUN
Outside the bars in the sun are green trees,
Tiny flower beds with petite pansies.
Far away is the patch of blue skies
And those faithful words "Pray for us."
People are always and everywhere the same,
How long can you be under an illusion?
What more can we expect of them;
They are cruel, poor, uninteresting and small,
And I am with among them, and there is nothing more. TOP
SNOW
There is a lot of snow over there,
They sell Christmas Trees on the square,
And someone expects irrationally,
That just today is the girls' return to the merry rally,
And that all of us together,
We, Dad and Kasia, will be forever.
Snow is falling quietly outside the window,
The last traces of tiny feet disappeared on the road.
In the white storm of the time, everything seems lost.
But our God sits in the evening under the tree,
We believe; he is close,
When we have a cup of tea. TOP
TO WLADKA
You are walking in the forest,
With bare, naked feet,
You are treading the fragrant moss
While the ray of the sun gets along.
The forest is full of secrets,
It rustles with sibilance about homesickness;
It is the strange wildwood of love,
Hidden in the hissing green
Do you smell the forest floor?
From the deep veins of rootstock,
Life grows, strengthens and flows.
With the forest eyes
You may see the secret
While into the depth retires.
You know - there is no sun to be seen,
The odd murmur only you may perceive,
And the deepest colour: dark green. TOP
THE DREAM
I had the dream
Where you read
Your poems,
Like those written
In ancient times.
Only these were
In the grey book,
Written after demise.
And you looked
Every passing moment,
More pleasing,
Yet paler and tinier.
Then you disappeared.
The last to vanish
were your thin hands,
And only the poems
Were left unharmed,
And in the lyrics was left
A lonely someone's heart. TOP
MOMENTS
Moments pass by,
Empty or bleak;
They are never as we wish.
Nobody's day
Follows a beaten path,
Colourless and wasted,
Lost in disorder.
So what am I waiting
For at last?
In every moment
That I think about life,
Where nothing abides,
And everything flows
And is passing by
And is running out. TOP
THE CASUAL SKETCH
This man, as if he had no face,
Husks, instead of glittering eyes,
Focused and without expression.
It is evident, were empty, his eyes.
I hadn't seen his hands,
Although he had passed me by.
He walked tall but unsteady
Appeared to be dim.
His hands had to be weak,
Empty, slime, worthless and slim. TOP
THOUGHTFULNESS
I was looking for something lost.
Nearby, there were tiny coffins
Poverty-stricken,
In nothingness embossed.
They were small at most,
Not mine, someone's else,
Too tight for my life, I guess,
And life itself,
What would it be like,
Without me?
Let me think,
It would be indifferent, I guess,
Like a letter without subject matter.
* * *
I wish the earth
Won't be heavy
In your grave,
Or hard like stone,
Or bitter like salt.
Let your folded hands
Sleep forever,
The pain is not eternal,
And in eternity,
Pain doesn't hurt. TOP
THE TINY ROOM
To Kasia
Tiny is your flat painted in white.
Flowers grow in a narrow window.
The pictures of saints of long ago,
All are in wooden frames,
And all hang on the same wall.
There is a simple cross with rosary,
In the room's corner, herbs are on the table,
And a tiny bottle with consecrated water.
All have been given to God's care,
Small is your room where
The human heart faithfully waits. TOP
THE INQUIETUDE
The day is like the inquietude of Chopin's music,
The birds scared away from their nests,
Are circling low above the earth.
They are listening, afraid…
Quietness in nature,
Warmth is like before a storm.
From the West, low, dark clouds flow.
Waylaid fear strikes into the heart.
Homesickness, homesickness…
I want to walk on soggy roads,
Listen to the sound of the wind,
Hunt the breath of springtime,
Feel deep feelings,
And quietness in love.
I am walking, unable to find,
Keep changing and returning;
Somewhere far away,
Village hamlets are left behind.
Clouds flew to the East,
And on the east side,
Lonely, leaning, dark trees endure.
In the wind and in the quietness,
They are swung by the inquietude. TOP
I LONG FOR THE GRAVE
I long for the grave left behind me,
To Your silence in flowers.
Oh, how long does it seem
When I ran along your tracks,
For I wanted to see them everywhere.
Along with the quiet, humming alleys
I was looking for your life
Wandering further and further.
How painful the sweetness
Of their overwhelming scents!
Your sleep, blue and silent, be blessed,
Sealed by the last gesture
Of you pure, lifeless hands.
Lublin prison, June 1941 TOP
FLOWERS
I remember buying
A lot of flowers
On the corner of some street,
Yet by this time,
They had faded and passed,
My autumn, pale asters
And lovely roses at last.
Everything is gone,
And I won't come back
To the same things.
For every moment is a new life
As long as life is flowing. TOP
DEATH
Death has eyes so clear;
It always seems far away,
Somewhere lurking,
It sees me and waits.
I know nothing about it yet,
Please tell me if it has Chopin's hands.
And why did it come so early, my dear? TOP
I ENCOUNTERED A SMILE TODAY.
I encountered a smile today;
Flat hypocrisy lurked from it,
And from a narrow slit,
Diagonally, ran a streak.
The timid, concealed contempt.
For these laughing, hidden, evil eyes
I am not sad, nor for flat, insincere,
Abusive words, nor even for silence.
Lublin prison, June 1941 TOP
BREAD
Cunningly and voraciously,
People counted it,
Hashing and rehashing hastily.
Somebody's hands
Were in motion, confused.
This bread nobody will choose.
They sat, bent over the table,
Waiting, greedily, self-focused
Not simple souls.
Seasoned with sharp, naked hunger
It won't be the bread of love.
Ravensbrück, 1941 TOP
ROLL-CALL
I'm so near now.
A bird's wing rubbed the sky,
That rises to brightness from blush.
The moon is in front of the sun.
All in a radiant cloud,
And the night passes by.
From nowhere, birds flew,
Over here, on a long route,
Chased by the wind
Across the blue sky,
Low obliquely above us, they fly.
We stand in ranks
At the heart of
The plainness silence.
And then the humming,
Brings the heartbeat,
The clatter of wheels,
And little childish bells.
Trains are going, trains,
With their wheels smashing the rails,
Prolong whistling, the same,
From a distance, me too,
Me too, please wait!
It passed by us and perished.
Without a voice, in silence,
We still stand; the world seems obvious
And simple as on a palm of a hand,
The image of the attached wagons,
It cannot ever be suppressed.
Ravensbrück 1941 TOP