Category: poetry

Here are my poems in English and Polish.

watercolour with a man paying with a credit card

The lost caress of dosh

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Practicality aside, there is a certain beauty to the old imperial coinage.
All those sovereigns and crowns and their halves, guineas, shillings,
and farthings—not to mention bobs, coppers, or tanners—are pure poetry
marked with the royal physiognomy. And while I appreciate the ease
of counting money after decimalisation, I still have a feeling something was lost
in the process—even more so once a quid became nothing but a virtual row
of zeros and ones spent with one careless swipe of a piece of plastic.

watercolour of a couple listening to a turntable

The last waltz

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski2 Comments

Waking up to Tom Traubert’s Blues
was never meant to be anything more
than a provisional unction
plastered over my troubled little I,
but with each hoarse waltz with Matilda,
my fingers became addicted
to the gentle brushing of the piano keys.

When I played it for you that morning,
you compared it to a glass of Chardonnay;
for me, it has always been more
like the rich savour of sun-dried tomatoes
bathed in sunflower oil,
but when you laughed in amusement at this,
the turntable stopped mid-word,

or perhaps it was us no longer present,
already honing the past.

watercolour of a devastated man sitting on a pile of cardboard boxes

Strategic retreat

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Once you span a lifetime of pity
with a pile of cardboard,
all that is left is one last goodbye,
despite knowing it’s just an empty gesture.

For a while, you try to keep up appearances,
but eventually you have to face the fact
that your dignified strategic retreat has fallen
on your tail between your legs.

watercolour with someone's hand pressing piano keys

The door to the soul

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

I like Monday blues, pure peppermint tea,
and the smooth touch of piano keys.
I make flatbread using my own recipe,
find washing dishes by hand calming,
and respect the spiders living in my bathroom.

I buy books in second-hand bookshops
for the dedications and random notes
left inside by previous owners.
If there is a film that particularly appeals to me,
I watch it over and over again,
even several times a day if time allows.
I also never treat music as background noise,
and if I feel like listening to something,
I make sure to pay it full attention.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night
or can’t fall asleep at all, and if that happens,
I get up to write a verse or two.
In principle, I could say that I quite like myself
and my life if it weren’t for the thorns
of everything I hate. It turns out that the door
to someone’s soul is in the shadows.

watercolour with statue of justice

The paradox of justice

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Entangled in paradoxes of substance, you seek a principle
against which there is no convention, while all I ever wanted
was a quiet midday nap, tired of your persistent attempts
at convincing me that if I descended from the magic mountain
to the flatlands, I would see that, for instance, the only difference
between criminals and law-abiding citizens lies in the definition
of an act of crime, because if one sunny morning, let’s say, speech
became an offence, few of the latter would manage to maintain
their status. But I honestly don’t know what you expected
since the justice system was never really about justice
but about maintaining social order—the winner’s justice
was always the loser’s injustice.

blue watercolour portrait of a young woman with closed eyes

An ink stain beyond courage

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

I’m the future stranger you used to love
(remember the declaration? I do).
I’d like to say it’s liberating,
but I still struggle with the time
between closing and opening the curtains.

For a while, I thought I should see
if I was still capable of being surprised,
but now that I’m older, I’m not sure
if I even have the guts to find someone
(it sounds so simple in blue ink on papier vélin)

and forget about you.

watercolour of a man reading a book in a public place

I still have my fountain pen

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Somewhere between a punching bag’s punching bag
and a fully fledged piss-artist, you decided that life is not long enough
to carry on like that, but you also know that it’s nothing
but an act of pure cruelty if you constantly complain about it
and still decide to bring a new one into this wretched realm of yours.
Then you may recall the invisible you barely knew, and only briefly,
as your blooming youth denied him a single breath in your vicinity.
The problem is that he has long disappeared from your sight,
and you have no idea where to start to find him.
I can give you a clue: always look for the one with a book,
mastering the sigla of the Leiden Conventions or chasing the quiet of a meadow
enchanted in the vellum pages of the Voynich manuscript.
Once you find me, never let me go. We may have enough time
for one last vacat page to fill.

watercolour with a man in a kimono walking among cherry blossom petals at night

A cut-off song

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

吾が舞へば、麗し女、酔ひにけり（あがまへば、くはしめ、ゑひにけり）
吾が舞へば、照る月、響むなり（あがまへば、てるつき、とよむなり）
結婚に、神、天下りて（よばひに、かみ、あまくだりて）
夜は明け、鵺鳥、鳴く（よはあけ、ぬへどり、なく）
遠神恵賜（とほ、かみ、ゑみ、ため）

Because I had danced, the beautiful lady was enchanted
Because I had danced, the shining moon echoed
Proposing marriage, the god shall descend
The night clears away and the chimera bird (white’s thrush) will sing
The distant god may give us the precious blessing!
Japanese pre-feudal-era wedding song

When, at midnight, he sings with a longing voice,
“A ga maeba, kuwashime yoinikeri,”
the wind pushes him towards his desire.

When, at midnight, he sings with a longing voice,
“A ga maeba, terutsuki toyomunari,”
cherry blossom petals show him the way.

When, at midnight, he sings with a longing voice,
“Yobai ni, kami amakudarite, yo wa ake, nuedori naku,”
a dropped feather caresses his flushed cheek,
and their hands, at the first touch, yearn for more already.

But then the scorching sun of the day comes
and turns the petals into dust on the road,
taking away his voice, so he can no longer sing
“Toh kami, emi tame.”

watercolour with husband and wife at the table

Survival

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Burying a dead bird, we listened to Gil Shaham’s violin in L’inverno.
Then I kissed your ink-stained hands as if nothing had happened,
and we embraced the routine: uneventful nights, quiet mornings,
and tedious climbing up whatever followed, day after day,
with the help of white lies and unsolicited acts of kindness.

Is it possible to die when life is an obligation and love is a calamity?
Can I at least change my mind on the little things once I tell you a story
about my day—an ordinary day, one of those where it’s possible to pass by unnoticed
like an idea of happiness, when it’s easy to regret since life is selfish
and a hug requires a script?

In a way, the word morbid sounds like a promise
that, with some strong language, the light could manage to get through
the shrouds that cover windows, and you no longer have to choose
between Latin and Greek profanities, knowing that survival is nothing
but performance.