Here are my poems in English and Polish.
In everything you say, it matters not only what you say
but also where you put the emphasis.
Like this little cutie: I didn’t steal your heart.
I didn’t steal your heart—something else did.
I didn’t steal your heart—it turned out to be just a minor misunderstanding on my part.
I didn’t steal your heart—you can’t steal what isn’t there, can you?
I didn’t steal your heart—Chance is a mighty Pandarus.
I didn’t steal your heart—what I took will remain my sweet secret for ever.
To be is the act of acts,
if the philosopher is to be believed,
but despite the active voice
of the copulative verb,
it nevertheless makes my existence a thing,
if you trust the poet who once said
that feeling and faith speak stronger
than the glass and eye of a sage.
It is fun to watch quarrels between two sides
of the same coin.
The order of words changes with time,
but as a patchy reader struggling to live a dying life,
I can always quote Marx—either Karl
or the Brothers would do—to amuse ladies
at this somewhat snooty brunch
my venery has become.
My body is slowly falling apart, and with it, everything else.
Nothing major quite yet, though; more like a foretaste found in the gallows
humour so typical of my native folk wisdom: When you are over forty
and you wake up in the morning with no pain, you are dead already.
But life is peachy, of course, because whether I thrive for or in spite of you,
I still need you, even if only for whatever the next folie à plusieurs would be.
After all, we are all in this bedlam together.
The shrieks and screams of the school yard across the street broke into the midday
silence of my reading—a clear sign that summer holidays are over. I guess it’s time
to push forward my lunch break given the suddenly noisy purlieu. And I know that
my serious-minded friends discuss storms and wildfires or the ongoing woe of war
in Ukraine while all I do is obsess over the now disturbed quiet of my daily habits,
which is probably not a particularly favourable demeanour, but at least I don’t have
to worry about facing later some hapless casualty—whom I happen to call a friend
or family—of my momentary urge for publicly practised honesty, just because they
appeared in my stanza by chance. Self-absorption as a viable means of protecting
others—who would have thought?
I bought the ugliest curtains
I could find—so ugly that no one wanted them
even on sale. But they cheer me up
every time I walk into my bedroom,
for there is some pitiful beauty in them,
or so I tell myself, because truth be told,
I didn’t do it out of some insatiable sense
of altruism—they were the cheapest,
that’s all. But doesn’t it feel better
to see yourself as an altruist
rather than a miser?
Forty years and the summer is over.
The raincoat and Wellington boots
are slowly catching up with the time
measured with the ochres of withered
leaves sticking to the soles, while hands
in pockets, still not ready for a cane,
are clutching the pebbles emitting
the last of the sunny riverbank warmth
until the first frost doffs its fedora
to the autumn foliage cadaver.
This is not your typical nine-to-five—utterance hunt, I mean. You struggle all day long
and through the night, whether it be journalism or poetry, just to get a glimpse of the truth
once in a while. I have been there, so I know. The only difference is that in one, you chase
facts of life embraced in words, while in the other, you pursue words embracing facts of life.
Perhaps I will leave saving the world
to greater minds and braver spirits.
I am not cut for profundity, too meagre
to become a hero, and clearly lack
the necessary charisma to inspire others.
There has always been something
missing in my constitution
that prevented me from even approaching
the depths of the sages’ wisdom
I desperately desired.
And since I cannot pave new paths,
all that remains is to limit damage
within the existing ones, at least
in my own backyard.
hidden pilcrow 