Read Online new poems by Tadeusz Rozewicz - Free Book Online Page B

these days
under the “dictatorship of the hairstylists”
    Â 
    in my youth
ladies of that age were called
better halves matrons old dears
caught in webs of wrinkles
painted and beribboned
    Â 
    I stand on the footbridge
    Â 
    I throw into the stream
pieces of the letter
the words “lots of kisses”

“thinking of you”
the white scraps drift away
disappear
the sun sets slowly
the water reddens
I talk to the stream
the stream is never heard
it will never speak
will never utter
the Word
    Â 
    [Kudowa Zdrój 1989]

tempus fugit
    (a story)
    Â 
    Â 
    A cold coming we had of it
Just the worst time of the year
for a journey, and such a long journey
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters
and the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
and the villages dirty and charging high prices . . .
“were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?”
    Â 
    Brother Richard’s retreat
on the heights
of the fifth floor
is hewn from the slopes of Mount Concrete
outside the window the Akerman Steppe
a thousand hearths
flaring and dying down
    Â 
    Brother Richard’s retreat
is inaccessible to clowns
to a certain
species of writers “lady artists”
    Â 
    before the end of the world
Brother Piotr and I are making a pilgrimage
to Akerman Mountain
mors certa hora incerta

this year we were accompanied
by Caspar Melchior and Balthasar
but our ways parted
on Boniface Street (named after a pope?)
    Â 
    We pass Caucasus Street send our greetings
to Prometheus
we wander the labyrinth of roads
at last we reach the place
of magic
(all places in this land are magical)
    Â 
    in a mechanical basket
an invisible power sweeps us
to the eighth floor
we drop to the fifth
in the meantime this fateful force
had transformed us regular joes
into angels (fake ones of course)
    Â 
    often in our journey
we stray
often the impure force casts
us down to the first floor
to the basement even the laundry room
we ask the natives
about the retreat of the elder
Zossima “no one by that name lives here”
they answer in their Mazovian burr
and do you happen to know

    Â 
    which floor Professor
Ryszard Przybylski lives on
they look at us and say
“never heard of him”
    Â 
    after a while we stand
in front of a grille
    Â 
    the grille rises and we are inside
death cell no. 20
which (like a slab of honey)
is fashioned from thousands of books
we smile say nothing
un-eloquently
    Â 
    Ryszard cups his hand
round his ear speak louder
since yesterday my hearing’s been de-teriorating
    Â 
    we exchange a few indifferent
words on the subject of angels
which as “subtle beings” were incorporated
into the pictures of Master Jerzy of Kraków
several such subtle beings
hover about Brother Ryszard’s head
when he sleeps his un-easy sleep
    Â 
    brother you slept through the birth
of a new Guardian Angel
the Holy Angel of Poland

    Â 
    I see surprise dis-belief
on Ryszard’s face
a monument has already been designed
there’s a foundation a nomination a jury
things got so silent you could hear a pin drop
    Â 
    Fallen
angels
are like
flakes of soot
like abacuses
like cabbage leaves stuffed
with black rice
and they are like hail
painted red
like heavenly fire
with yellow tongues
    Â 
    fallen angels
are like
ants
like moons squeezing under
the green fingernails of the dead
    Â 
    angels in heaven
are like the inner thighs
of a little girl
    Â 
    they are like stars
shining in intimate places

pure as triangles and circles
inside they possess
tranquility
    Â 
    fallen angels
are like the open windows of a charnel-house
like cows’ eyes
like birds’ skeletons
like falling airplanes
like flies on the lungs of fallen soldiers
like torrents of autumn rain
that the mouth links to the departure of birds
    Â 
    a million angels
roam
across a woman’s hands
    Â 
    they have no navel
they write on sewing machines
composing long poems in the form