hidden pilcrow

my name is not important, but if you would like to hear it, listen
to the rain in december. my age does not matter, but if you must know
how old i am, look at the granite road paving remains at the gallowgate,
where public hangings were conducted. the timbre of my voice fades
against the stormy waves, and only the humming sound continues
to percuss their reflection. after all these years, i still learn how to lull
my expectations somewhere between the banks of dee and don.
but at least i know some useful phrases and places worth visiting.
so here i am, a forsaken word dweller on an unplanned weekend
getaway that never ended.

i still remember when my father
brought home our first vhs player.
it was a rarity in communist poland.
i borrowed all the tapes they had
from my friends and we spent hours
watching hong kong kung fu films.
it was an unforgettable experience
for the boy i was then, debating
whether the drunken master would fit
in with the thirty-sixth chamber.
hong kong shaped our imaginations.

and who would have guessed then
that more than three decades later,
the drunken master would enter
my thoughts again while watching
as the totalitarian chinese regime,
with secretary xi jinping, fearing
the facts, tries to erase the remnants
of memory of the past in the form
of a statue that had sat on the campus
mourning all those victims killed
in the tiananmen square massacre?

sometimes it crosses my mind that i have
probably had exorbitant expectations. otherwise,
what a problem it was to find someone
for whom bosch is not a commercial brand,
who does not mind watching the apartment
multiple times in a row, and has no desire
to toast her body in the sun of tenerife,
or whatever the current hottest spot is.
and only today, when i reached for the jar
of sauce, the same as always, sweet and sour,
it dawned on me that maybe it was not a problem
with the expectations, but that i always entered
the wrong lift.

when i read the diary of my favourite thinker
in english, knowing the polish original,
i was a bit disappointed. on the other hand,
one of the regulars of the café novelty admitted
that his del sentimiento trágico de la vida
was actually more substantively refined
in translation. but if neither the author
nor the translator give substantial grounds
to sustain a somewhat diminished credibility
of intellectual sophistication, where does that
leave a simple crash blossom collector,
laughing hysterically to get noticed?

i think we should buy a copy of casablanca
or maybe when harry met sally would suffice
(oh my goodness, i love that pecan pie!,
but i doubt i look good in skirts.
ah, and can i have what she had?).
so yes, casablanca… actually,
what i was trying to say is,
can we never order a salad
after a charlie chaplin joke?

i guess i just like to sound
a little melodramatic
as while nibbling a carrot,
i wonder how best to describe
your lips that i will never be able
to kiss. it is friday night, after all,
and i have not even decided yet
whether to watch a single man again
or read homo faber, which i know
almost by heart. so let us embrace
sir huxley’s notion of experience
and try to make a little more of it
than just toilsomely figuring out
how to breath in and out
on demand.

what does it mean if, when your ex uses you,
your daughter does not even acknowledge
your existence, and you fall for your friend
who is already married, all you can think of
is writing a verse? there must be something
inherently wrong with a man who steals
his own story just to please, for a moment,
a casual passer-by.

it was four shillings’ worth of words, moved gently once
across millennia and given with a thoughtful line to soothe
the nights of chilling blackouts. i found it hidden on a shelf
in a charitable establishment quietly run by some odd fellows
in a forgotten, ancient alley. at first, its dusty gilded head
and slightly soiled burgundy covers escaped my eye, but then
i took a half step back and grabbed their word of sudden hope
at a time when hope was worth no word.

Morning a thousand Roses brings, you say;
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

tell me, whose fault was it that we tried to escape the autumn scent,
naively believing in the linden blossoms collected that summer?
you taught me to follow your inattentive gaze into shady alleys.
i created random phrases to escape the attention of foreign ears.
even the volume of ovid, opened only on odd days of the week,
was still filled with sycamore leaves falling in this one park.
so tell me, how did we miss winter coming?