Dobova

Dobova

Ivan the factory
Ezekiel"s chariot
Kraków, Kazimierz
Šalamun"s temple
Ambrosia
Dice
Dobova
Castle
Kosovel
Ethno counting-out

for Bruno Shultz

Never has God attached Past to Present
with such a powerful glue
like the one that I inhaled everywhere
in the air there by the WisBa
o you, yingele
looking for those cinnamon brown shops
where your ancestors long ago
whispering in anguish
cursed all of the morning stars
that remained forever sewn
onto their sleeves
and onto your snowy eyes

now kiss that sepia
spilling sweet blackness of death
so that your dream
may not find the path to the open sea again.

Pray for those phantoms
drawn by polar light across the sky
for somebody else’s sake
and never tell anybody
what you saw there in the white
o you, yingele.

Whoever has but once followed
anybody’s footsteps in the snow
knows that no one returns the same path
by which he once tried
to trick time

for God sees us even more clearly in the snow
allowing it to fall only during his blackouts
medicating some incurable fear with it.

The fogs from the northern seas
travelled many a long and distant mile
entering as deep as possible into the southern plains
so that the firstborn could hide
his tired army in them

that’s how
I always thought
Poland came into being
and whenever the late autumn fog descends
upon Kazimierz
I see myriads of those phantoms again
trying to burn
their own shadows
like dirty rags
spelling out the names
o you, yingele
of all my known
and your unknown
dead.

Whoever has but once
followed anybody’s footsteps in the snow
shall finally at the end of his journey
if only in a dream
reach Kazimierz

and there he shall say
why did you abandon me, home sweet home
o you, yingele.

AuthorDelimir Rešicki
2018-08-21T17:22:57+00:00 June 25th, 2009|Categories: Poetry, Blesok no. 66|0 Comments