Chicago City of Hope

This was how my father greeted my questions about Adam Lizakowski. The year was 1992 and I was a senior in high school. I'd been writing poetry for some four years but besides the friends I'd made through publishing a few poems in my high school's literary journal, I'd had little contact with any serious writers or poets. In fact, since I was 18 years old, had a charged imagination and had grown up quite sheltered in a half-suburb of Chicago, I believed that poets - especially in their physical presence - were somehow different from the average person, that they "dwelt apart," as the saying goes.

My father had just returned from Lizakowski's first poetry reading in Chicago. My mother had met Lizakowski about two weeks earlier. She worked (and still does) for the Dziennik Związkowy, Chicago's largest Polish newspaper, and she met Lizakowski when he came to the newspaper's offices to submit an advertisement for his reading. They spoke only a few minutes. My mother mentioned that I wrote poetry, that a couple of my poems had been published (she might have had the high school journal at hand), and Lizakowski asked to meet me at some point in the future. Since arriving in Chicago, he said, he'd been looking for Polish or Polish-American writers and if he liked my poems (here, of course, my mother urged him on) perhaps he'd translate a few of them into Polish and we could give a reading.

The night of Lizakowski's reading, however, I stayed home and my father went alone. I don't remember the excuse I gave, but I must have asserted that my Polish wasn't up to par, especially for poetry. But I can admit now (as I subsequently remedied the situation) that my refusal to go had more to do with me being intimidated. Lizakowski would have that "glow" that all poets did, he'd see that I didn't have a corresponding one, and that would be the end of that - vanished the fame I imagined for myself whenever I wrote poetry, my poems known only to my closest friends and not translated into many languages as had been the works of my then favorite writer, Count Leo Tolstoy.

So when my father came home and described Lizakowski and the audience at his reading, a small number compared to the crowds that would soon begin buying his books and attending his readings, I was shocked. Lizakowski's muted voice and his withdrawn presence went against everything that I'd expected. He'd read for about an hour, most of the poems describing San Francisco (where he'd lived before Chicago) or harkened back to his hometown in Poland, Pieszyce, which by a fortunate coincidence was also the town where my father grew up, though before Lizakowski was born. So after the reading my father approached Lizakowski, spoke with him a few minutes, invoked the promise Lizakowski had made to my mother and, my father assured me, we'd be having Lizakowski over for dinner within the next week or two.

Surprisingly, I do not remember that dinner, nor the next couple of times that Lizakowski visited our house. He must have come over as promised, my parents and he doing most of the talking while I for once, though shy and awkward, was unable to dash into my room (as I usually did) and sequester myself with books. Instead, I waited in silence, scrutinizing Lizakowski's appearance: his round face, his Whitmanesque beard, his small and delicate hands.

What I do remember of those days is the period right after Lizakowski made the first translations of my poetry. As he worked during the day, he usually came over at night just as my parents were going to bed. He'd have a drink with my father and then we went to work, sitting up late in my living room (the door of my parents' bedroom closed so we wouldn't wake them), reading my poems line by line, I struggling to articulate the sense of many an obscure passage in English - those which had seemed "cool" to me when I wrote them but which, Lizakowski showed me, would only frustrate my readers. Ultimately, Lizakowski produced a wonderful set of translations which we published as 28/6 (1993) through the literary group he began soon after arriving in Chicago, "The Unpaid Rent Poetry Group," and I learned a great deal about how to write poetry.

Adam Lizakowski, the oldest of three children, was born in Poland in 1956, in Dzierzoniow (a town adjacent to the Pieszyce) in lower Silesia. His mother was a weaver, his father served as a soldier during World War II and afterwards undertook various odd jobs. The region was rural, but developed and affluent, and Lizakowski spent the first twenty-five years of his life there attending school, working and holding various positions, the last of which was theater instructor in the region's Polish Cultural Center, which in addition to the arts sponsored such activities as soccer and expeditions to the nearby mountains. He began writing at an early age and, though his work was published in various local publications, his poems did not receive national attention until 1980 when they appeared in Tygodnik Kulturalny, a journal published out of Warsaw. These, however, were stern years in communist Poland and as Lech Wałęsa and his Solidarity movement gained recognition and support, Lizakowski painfully discovered that the opportunities for uncensored publication were few. In fact, when Lizakowski left Poland in 1981 for a short vacation in Austria, the Polish government of Jaruzelski declared martial law and Lizakowski was stranded abroad. He remained in Austria for a short time and arrived as a refugee in San Francisco early in 1982.

As Lizakowski had taken few possessions with him when he left Poland, in San Francisco he had to begin life anew, nominally as a refugee, realistically like most other immigrants from poor countries - with few friends and little English. It may be no coincidence that at this point Lizakowski began to write poetry more seriously and regularly than ever before. He took creative writing classes at the City College of San Francisco and started translating his favorite American poets - Walt Whitman and his "sons" (as Lizakowski calls them): Carl Sandburg, William Carlos Williams and Langston Hughes. From the City College, Lizakowski transferred to the University of California at Berkeley and commenced study in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, where he befriended Czesław Miłosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. During this time too Lizakowski published his first book of poetry, Cannibalism Poetry (1984), in a bilingual Polish-English edition, worked for a short time for the United States Postal Service, and eventually became the editor-in-chief of the Polish literary journal Razem where he first published many of his translations.

But for various reasons, including the relatively small Polish community there, Lizakowski felt San Francisco was unsatisfactory. While living in California he'd traveled extensively along the west coast but ultimately in early 1992 he moved to Chicago. Here, as I already mentioned, he befriended my family but also, spurred by the publication of another poetry book, The Cherry Bandits (1990), he began to promote his own poetry vigorously, launched his Polish-American literary group and in 1993 (with the help of various sponsors) began publishing Dwa Końce Języka, the official quarterly bilingual journal of his group. Lizakowski's arrival in Chicago seemed to restore his energy and to instill a new sense of purpose. Within two years, through his efforts and those of his closest friends, Lizakowski in effect created and sustained Chicago's Polish literary scene, the backroom of his "Golden Bookstore" on Archer Avenue providing the site for numerous literary events, "The Unpaid Rent Poetry Group" publishing the works of Chicago's most enthusiastic Polish and Polish-American writers, and Lizakowski himself giving readings (often with the help of renowned Polish actors such as Leszek Pniaczek, Andrzej Kiesz and Stanisław Wojciech Malec) throughout locations in Chicago including the General Consulate of Poland - in short, initiating a comprehensive effort to develop and affirm Chicago's Polish-American literary culture which has continued to this day and has led to this publication of Lizakowski's poems in English.

But what distinguishes Lizakowski's poetry? How has he gained such a large Polish audience not only in Chicago, where his writings have appeared in most of the Polish newspapers and journals, but also generally in Poland, where he continues to win highly competitive competitions such as first place in the recent Polish government-sponsored contest for works concerning "The Western Fate of Poles, 1939-1989"? Adriana Szymańska, for example, has written that Lizakowski is the "first true Polish - immigrant poet," while Czesław Miłosz as cited on the back of Lizakowski's 1992 book, Contemporary Primitivism, asserts that Lizakowski shows that "even from a reality as brutal as Polish Chicago something worthwhile can be created." But, though these statements indicate important aspects of Lizakowski's poetry, the present collection demonstrates that these are only facets of a much more complex entity. Drawing on Lizakowski's five most important books of poetry - The Cherry Bandits (1990), Contemporary Primitivism (1992), Unpaid Rent (1996), Chicago City of Dreams (1998), and his most recent and as yet unpublished work, On the California Shore - this collection displays the diversity and depth of Lizakowski's thought over a period of seventeen years.

Yet in our first approach to his work it is best to examine it poem by poem, encounter it directly and honestly, make Lizakowski's thoughts our own. Though I am now a literary scholar by profession (with an occasional secret attempt at my own poetry or short fiction) whenever I read Lizakowski I discard the tools of my trade. Words like ideology, transference and critique seem inappropriate, even sacrilegious when describing Lizakowski's project. He is private but not obscure, terse but not evasive, candid but never sentimental or mawkish:

We do not read into the poetry as much as respond to it's surface, noting its harmony, its aesthetic force. Aunt Martha becomes real because of the evocative and poignant details Lizakowski selects. So, although we get only a few moments of her life, we see her whole, we see her memorably. For me, here and in poems like "Elegy for a Car," "Grandma Paulina" and "Little Tiger," Lizakowski is at his best - his subject single, his method brief characterization.

Thus we glimpse the skeleton of his values. During a poem like "Elegy for a Car," for example, we smile at Lizakowski's deliberate extremity, but simultaneously pause whenever he undercuts the overt humor:

These are serious moments, the real structure points of life. Marx would say that Lizakowski treasures his car because it represents achievement from a lower-class, economic perspective, but such analysis does not explain Lizakowski's relevance to us, the readers. We go to him, if we are imaginative and curious, to know the substance of the life of a Polish immigrant. When I see Lizakowski mourn his car so specifically, over such a "poetic" time, I begin to laugh and mourn with him, experience a new intensification of the everyday. The car, especially because of its constant presence, bridges Lizakowski's most charged moments of self-assertion; its death becomes the metaphor of transition to a new stage of Lizakowski's maturity. I relate so visibly because I see myself and many of my friends within the poem: we too associate various things, people, cities with periods of our lives, and miss them deeply when gone.

"Elegy for a Car" guides us, too, to an understanding of one of Lizakowski's most prevalent modes of expression, the tempered elegiac, the "jocoserious," as James Joyce would say. What inspires this poetic mode? A combination, I believe, of Lizakowski's naturally good-humored temperament-so he has always seemed to me - and the more tragic, historical circumstances of his life. We must remember, when he left Poland in 1981 he became a refugee not by chance but by choice. That he stayed in exile for the next seven years, until the collapse of the communist government, was again by choice. But what was the alternative?

Comprehensive loss of freedom, poverty, daily anger and daily fear. Though, as the reader will soon find, moments such as these are rare in the poems translated for this collection, I think the moments are that much more valuable because of their singularity. Here we glimpse Lizakowski and his emotions stark, unadorned; we learn the "assumed" from which his thoughts derive. Poland, we realize, is his great but complicated loss, the touchstone, the present-absence, what the new "America" must compensate for.

A year ago I myself spent the summer in Poland. My accommodations were in Warsaw, but I traveled to other regions and cities as often as my obligations and energy would allow. Since my last, childhood visit to Poland I'd generated "my" idea of the country and I was curious now - perhaps apprehensive - to experience "capitalism's changes" (as my parents called them). But Poland surprised me. The country, the basic and immediate appearance which I so valued, was consistent with my memories. There were differences, of course-articles such as chocolate, butter and soda now could easily be purchased, the government no longer dominated television programming, the people seemed happier and more talkative - yet these differences had visible boundaries. In Warsaw the trams, the high-rise apartments, the narrow streets of the Old Town were as I wanted them to be, while away from the cities we again raced over the flat, rural expanses of land, passed the sparsely-placed trees, the solitary farmhouses. Pieszyce too, to which I made my first visit, was the typical small Polish town of my imagination. The Church of St. Anthony dominated the town square, the streets were quiet, the buildings in charming disrepair, the architecture simple and blunt, dull white or gray, older men and women casually watching me from their second and third floor windows. Time halted. I felt profoundly at home because what I remembered was enriched, not challenged. But I mention my experience only because I believe it relates to Lizakowski's. Poland appears frequently in his poetry, as we would expect, but almost always as Pieszyce and its cherry trees. The Pieszyce I saw, as one of my uncles reassured me, continues unchanged from the 1970s and 80s, so it is also the Pieszyce where Lizakowski grew up and where he roots his fantasies:

We associate the bed with love, comfort and security, but for Lizakowski, the immigrant, this most private location becomes a site of ambivalence. He longs for home, for the stability of a town like Pieszyce, but even a glance out of his window restores the foreign monuments of the present. How does he resolve this tension?

His question, one which we all ask at some point, recalls Heidegger's assessment of humans as a "throwness-into-being," but Lizakowski avoids the accompanying despair. Pieszyce, we see, is both the cause of Lizakowski's doubled narration and descriptions, and his primary means of "grounding" himself in his new environment.

So, contrary to what we might expect, his central concern, his "poetic project" is not to describe his longing for Poland, however powerful this may be, but to convey his experience of "America." Memories of Poland are but one of Lizakowski's poetic resources. By showing what America is not, he can also clarify what it is:

The theme here is the privation, almost stereotypical, that new immigrants experience. Lizakowski himself acknowledges that the situation is not remarkable, but his depiction restlessly pursues nuance and implication. He begins with a description, shifts to a simile, ends with a generalization. His mind, we realize, is rapidly transformative and at each stage of the poem we gain a more subtle and unexpected understanding of the moment. Yet Lizakowski is just as effective when he works through omission:

Lizakowski deliberately avoids naming the couple or specifying their location. Yet this linguistic economy has a counter-intuitive result: as we reconsider the poem, the profusion of meaning startles us. On one level, Lizakowski suggests, immigration disintegrates the family and abstracts the individual. On another level, there is a universality that marks certain immigrant experiences and our exclusion, especially if we ourselves are not immigrants or the recent descendants of immigrants, reinforces this universality: though to us the setting above may seem undistinguished-even generic-each immigrant, Lizakowski argues, can supply the details.

Yet I do not want to imply that Lizakowski is always so unforgivingly critical. As he once told me, he never chose the contents and concerns of his poetry-they were chosen for him by the circumstances of his life. Like many Poles of his generation Lizakowski grew up with a fixed, inculcated vision of the United States: he believed in the "myth of America," the superabundance, that there was "money on the streets" (as the popular Polish saying goes). It may be useful, therefore, to consider Lizakowski's work from the perspective of his "intentions" (however unfashionable such an approach may currently be): his poetry-he tells us-is a response. Consequently, early on Lizakowski depicts the material and spiritual scarcity of his new surroundings, but with time and experience his vision of America shifts considerably:

Lizakowski combines his old vision with a new, rapturous one. He does not abandon the present (as when surrendering to memories of Poland), but rather engages and celebrates it. He catalogues his surroundings in a way which recalls, not surprisingly, Homer's Iliad or Whitman's Leaves of Grass-though, let us remember, unlike these poets Lizakowski writes of a "foreign" land. Thus, when at the end of "Chicago" he joins the other immigrants in singing the chorus of Robert Johnson's "Sweet Home Chicago," for Lizakowski the words are not a clich of the popular culture (as they might be for the average American), but something strange and fantastic. His skill lies not only in that he makes us aware of this discrepancy, but that he transfers-almost imperceptibly - his fascination to us, his perhaps - jaded readers.

Lizakowski, we may then say, writes from a unique vantage, as any extended consideration of his opus begins to show. He is both participant and observer, a victim of immigration and celebrant of its "mysteries" (in the current and archaic senses of the word). In his newest poems, those drawn from Chicago City of Dreams and On the California Shore, the fusion of these opposites becomes especially apparent:

On one hand, he addresses his precursors directly, marvels at the originality of their accomplishments and acknowledges himself as yet another of Walt Whitman's "sons." On the other hand, Lizakowski takes the lives of these precursors and makes them his own, foregrounding themes - as in "Illinois," "The Prairie" and "Charles Bukowski" - that previously had been but suggested:

Bukowski's life provides the model for Lizakowski's, yet Lizakowski introduces an important difference, incorporating Greek mythology as a symbol not of the past as it had been with Bukowski, the "enigmatic descendant of Silenius," but of the present and future. In fact, Lizakowski discovers such layering and reversal in an array of surprising places, including "Tijuana":

The Mexicans waiting at the border of the United States - much like Lizakowski waited while a refugee in Austria - though their faces recall their Native American ancestors, "Aztec, Mayan, Tarachuman," at the same time evoke deep levels of Western European mythos. The "revelation," however, comes through the fact that Lizakowski associates these Mexicans with the champions of the Trojan War - ultimately, perhaps, indicating his final, optimistic view of the immigrant experience.

But for me "Tijuana" bears a special and more important relation to Lizakowski and his poetry. I have known him now some seven years, yet still whenever I think of him I always return to my father's initial description. Certainly, as I've already mentioned, the moment remains with me because of the shock I then, as a hyperbolic eighteen year old, experienced - but now I realize, too, how simultaneously accurate and inaccurate my father's first statement was. At times, Lizakowski, especially in his poetry, seems a quiet, even reserved person: his vocabulary is simple, his diction straightforward, his meaning always accessible. But when one begins to read his poetry deeply, as I have had to in undertaking this project, one begins to see another side of Lizakowski - one begins to wonder whether threethousand year old myths about Greek wooden horses might, in fact, have some validity.

My Poems
My poems are born inside of me, beneath my liver, heart, lungs. I let strangers peek beneath the skin of my thoughts, dreams, poetic integrity and pride. It is neither comfortable nor ethical, but shameful and embarrassing; I yell, Look! It hurts right here, give me medicine! My poems are a suicide cyanide tablet, formula for perfect tragedy, I hate them because they're so close to me inside me, I can't pounce on them, break their neck.

The Poet

The poet should be a dog
who pokes his nose in the garbage can
smells the roses in the emperor's garden
barks and howls at the moon
even if it
ignores him

From Pieszyce to San Francisco

The Cherry Bandits

I
The copper moon
hung in the ink-black sky
sky above the cherry-tree peaks
peaks above the blond heads
of three twelve-year-old boys
from the same street-
connoisseurs of amazing cherries.
(In the darkness by moonlight
cherries are not cherries
but precious stones from royal crowns-
exotic, expensive jewels stolen
by pirates - stashed
in the dark caves of mysterious islands.)
Hidden amid branches, devouring the cherries
each races to cram his mouth with more.
They - their heart-leaves shook by the cherry-trees -
eagerly grab what's not theirs
boldly drawing the soft branches nearer
dancing like birds among the leaves, singing as they munch
passionate in the moment.
They spit out the cherry-pits, look down
and a vision lighter than a May-bug's wings rises
above the tips of grass-
in the distance chimneys deeply inhale and exhale
for the last time
dozing after a moment, stretching out in exhaustion,
sleepy windows blinking their shuttered eyelids...
it is quiet-the crickets sing in chorus
and night, the bell-smith, slowly, precisely
casts the delicate bells of dew
on the lead tenor.
Between the three
and the cherry-tree and the night
love is born-between the heart and cherries
between leaves and moonlight-
there runs a feeling so evasive
that no one can put a finger on it,
let alone express it.
Boys beautiful and innocent, joined by sweet cherries.

II
Stuffing the labyrinth of their stomachs
they put their guard, Vigilance, to sleep.
Their treasures hidden under their shirts
they had little chance for escape.
The cherry-orchard owner, Mr Michalski, promised
that if they ate the stolen cherries on the spot
he'd forget the whole thing.
But he didn't keep his word,
led them back to their parents
who boxed the boys' ears as a lesson.

III
Twelve years later the three cherry bandits
stopped at the camp gates in Traiskirchen, Austria.
They hadn't eaten in two days,
slept in three nights, bathed in four days-
it was November, arch-foe of dreamers, of carefree men.

IV
If you don't find happiness in your own country
it won't be found elsewhere.
Fresh are the mornings for those rising at dawn
to milk the cows, feed the animals,
fasten the grapevines.
But not to those slaving for their naps
at the gates of the camp in Traiskirchen.
Trains, roaring like waterfalls, roll
into the Viennese station-the river of people rushes
to the ocean of freedom.
The port of freedom is the administration building-
painfully its grim exterior pricks
the tired eyes of the refugees.
The regimental barracks of Joseph the Friar
one-time school for the Nazi's bravest cadets
and current garrison of the brave Red Army
now-ironically-give hope of a better life
not happier, just better-
for these Eastern Europeans, traitors to their countries.

V
Million-copy print-runs, poetic honors,
front-page newspaper photos,
the most beautiful women, fame, money
dreams of distant and sunny California.
Reality is otherwise,
the eyes open wider
reluctant-everyone was reluctant
against their ears hummed the ocean waves
which they'd demanded with so much greed,
more patient now they wait in kilometer-long lines
in their hands tin receptacles for dinner-
answer the more and less
idiotic questions of the officers,
photos, fingerprints,
signatures, endless signatures,
decisions weighed,
numerous decisions, the selection of countries, of cities,
of sponsoring organizations,
brief friendships, sometimes but a moment,
tears, letters sent, glances back-
there's Poland like a dog
jumping at you, tugging its chain,
baring its teeth,
Jaruzelski's martial law in a fury-
what'll happen to the prisoners
will they shoot them-
not my family I hope-
fatigue, distraction, apathy, depression,
lines to the stores, to the beds, the toilets,
interrogations everywhere,
hundreds, thousands of people.
Communism
on their lips, in their skulls, dreams
communism
source of the people's tragedy
communism
and its prophets damned to their cores
communism
stretched, coaxed, paired, spit upon
communism
mud's synonym, soiling even the best men-
though the few gored most by communism's
devil-horns
(or those with the most imagination)
were the first to fly away on angel's wings.

VI
Squabbles with the Albanians,
Hungarians cursing the Romanians,
the Czechs and Slovaks,
the Yugoslavians dominating everyone,
knife-fights, drunken brawls,
drawn-out disturbing howls.
Sex is at a high price-
though there's few women,
Polish hookers the cheapest
but unwilling with the Polish men;
a golden age for homosexuals;
a floor up there's a brothel run
like the best American supermarkets.
Thank God you survived another day,
pray for a quiet night-
many are sleeping in bunkbeds,
in the hallways,
keep your papers under the pillows,
sleep with your eyes open.
The blankets a purgatorial curtain -
border between
being a beggar-slave of the commune
or humble servant of capitalism.
Of the thousands of refugees only a few will return.
Then day arrives, the smartest men, the earliest risers
(there might be a bread-shortage at breakfast)
dash to the toilets,
dash to the bulletin-boards and scan the lists-
no, not today,
though their wings are growing
rustling in their dreams:
Angles-creatures so delicate
God gave them wings.

VII
The good-hearted people published a book
in Polish and English,
A Handbook for Polish refugees, prepared and presented
by the International Catholic Migration,
Geneva, Switzerland.
The Americans bathe daily
keep their money in banks,
there's a hundred pennies in each dollar,
packages are mailed at the post office
letters go in the boxes painted blue,
in an emergency dial 911,
in the USA
the British measurement system is standard,
in a few days you'll understand:
cars are the most popular form of transportation,
fruit is cheapest in season,
meat comes in packages
kept in the freezers of the big stores...
America is a country of immigrants
and immigrants are America's wealth.

Psalm of the Cherry Bandits

In our little town
in the Church of St. Anthony
hangs Your portrait, Lord
Your face distressed
drops of blood at Your temples
eyes red and woeful
lips painfully drawing breath.
Night arrives. Where are You, Lord?
Your bed is made
a bowl of water awaits You
come to us
we'll bandage Your head
comb Your hair
wash the tired feet
clean Your shoes
and for supper You'll eat bread and butter
and cherry jam.
Lord, You're tired
come to us now
don't wait for the Final Judgment
where our very bodies
will testify against us
head will say, "I planned conspiracies"
eyes will say, "I saw blood"
tongue will say, "I swore"
hands will say, "I stole"
legs will say, "I led him astray."
Lord, even if we eat
all the cherries in the world
and understand the secret
of cherry orchards
without Your love we are nothing
without You sweet cherries
are not sweet
but wet lumber
thrown in the fire
inflammable
but rising smoke
that stings the eyes.
Lord, Your love -
cherry orchards in eternal bloom,
a young woman in a flower dress
waiting to marry an army of bees.

Confession of a Hooligan
Lord, I am worthless dust
created according to Your
will and judgment,
into my heart You poured love and goodness,
though You forgot to give me
an independent country.
Lord, if You think
that I don't love You
You're mistaken,
if You think that in my prayers
I ask something for myself
You're mistaken,
if You think
hatred fills my soul,
bitterness pulses in my veins
and my heart is sour like wormwood
You're mistaken.
Lord, I know-You created the world for me,
man, woman,
the snake slithering up the apple tree,
width of the ocean and span of the continents,
the glow of royal chambers,
gloom of prison cells,
for me You light the stars
in the evening sky,
for me in the spring
birds sing songs
of ancient deserts and fields,
in autumn You turn the forests gold, the lakes silver.
Lord, forgive me that I can't
praise You
like David or Solomon,
can't believe in you with a faith equal
to the heroes
of the Old and New Testaments,
Lord, You are a stern teacher
of biology
who could never throw a rock at a dog
or kick a cat,
but who mercilessly pulls the ears
of little boys, strikes their swelling palms
with a ruler.
Lord, have mercy,
take pity on me,
a bird for whom traps are laid
even in his own country.
Lord, come closer,
look at my chains,
free me, don't abandon me
or are You too offended?
Why are you angry?...

Grandma Paulina
In 1888 or 1889, when she was three or four years old
she slept on the stove,
till one day she found her father's big, clunky boots
drying there-
a hundred horned devils tempted her
to stuff the boots full of marmalade.
I liked her, she never complained
never let me down
never searched for ideals in life.
She lived through two world wars
a typhoid epidemic (which grandpa didn't survive)
the emperors of Russia, Austria, Germany
(who even from their graves still wedge
their feet in the border-doors of neighboring countries)
...and how often did her fading eyes glimpse
the most depraved and greedy of men.
How often did her hands (shaped like row-boat paddles)
point out a scythe beyond the window,
cut bread,
change a child's diapers,
dress a corpse, make the sign of the cross over a coffin,
how often disclose
the greatest secret (the recipe for cherry preserve)
solve the greatest riddles
(ironing those pants just right)
reveal the greatest mystery
(what I'd get from my parents for Christmas).
When I was born, she was about 70 years old.
I understood her when the milk boiled over
when she anxiously searched
for her rosary, purse, tissues, cane.
I loved to hear her stories
twaddles, fables, frills
oh God, how I loved her,
her fantastic sense of humor, her graceful replies.
She was the smartest woman in the world
though she never learned to read or write
oh God, how she loved me
though she never told me so herself.
To love someone means to rock them on your knee
to sing
"A krakowiaczek* had little horses seven
then went to war, had only one horse left;
he fought for seven years, but never drew his sword
so the sword had rusted, never used in war."
To love someone means to tie their shoes
to pat their head, scratch their back
let them blow their nose into the edge of your apron.
After 25 years I still remember her:
a small dried-out plum (that's how she looked)
I stand beside the window, the devilish cat sleeps on her bed
we're waiting for her - at last she comes
a purse in her left hand, a cane in her right,
she's back from church.
I close my eyes and see her,
not so long ago,
yesterday-a hundred years ago
she climbs onto the stove like a cat.

Aunt Martha
Aunt Martha died unexpectedly
of a heart attack
in May 1984, in Poland
Aunt Martha never wrote poems,
created only the prose of life
cooking, cleaning, etc.
caring for her only son, Thomas
Aunt Martha never expected
anything from her relatives
and when she suffered it was for herself
or for her son
She took up the pen
only on the holidays
or a birthday or saint's day
addressing the envelopes with awkward letters,
on colored paper she wrote:
happy holidays
or happy birthday
or best on your saint's day
love, Aunt Martha and her son
from Kunów*

From Pieszyce to San Francisco
The rhyme "quite close" jumps to my lips.
The rhyme and the truth.
It depends on what end of the bed I'm sitting on.
From the left end (near the window)
I see the tree-tops in the park
and the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge.
At the right end (near the closet)
I keep my personal belongings:
I'm in Pieszyce-
it takes no imagination or great effort,
I just need to remember which end of the bed it is.
When I sleep my feet are in San Francisco (reality),
my head in Pieszyce (dreams).
I never write home (I've nothing to write about),
I don't send money (I don't have any)
for tractors, cars, houses, building materials, etc.
I can't imagine what it's like
to have a video tape of your family,
or to call them on the phone twice a month -
what kind of immigration is that, what kind of immigrant?
I take little interest in my family, i.e.
who died, who was born, who's sleeping with whom,
is there a child, etc.
who's arguing with whom, who likes whom, etc.
I'm an old-fashioned immigrant. I suffer alone,
I don't complain, sometimes the old country's my "beloved,"
sometimes a "slut." I prefer books over other immigrants,
I love poetry more than myself.
My room is small, if I have company they sit
on the 21 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica,
7 volumes per behind (I never have over three guests)
and besides, you learn the most
when you're sitting down.
But I never let anyone sit on my bed -
my bed's the meeting place of two Caesars,
two ideas, two continents, two cultures,
two religions, two borders, two civilizations,
water and earth, reality and dreams.

San Francisco
San Francisco, sly fox
hidden behind the corner of the bay
with its extended paw of the peninsula.
Had there been a cherry orchard here
surrounded by the biggest fence, patrolled by dogs
the aroma of ripening cherry trees
would fill the air
a bumblebee weaving among them with it's
bzz... bzz... bzz...
But there is no cherry orchard, just hills, foothills
overgrown with wooden houses,
streets arranged both parallel and perpendicular
to the horizon's line, to the ocean's edge.
The dome of the Civic Center recalls
an elegant pastry, cherry-topped
the Modern Museum, the Public Library
Roman baths,
the Symphony and Opera halls
take the shape of cosmic pigeon cages.
Neither the cliffs nor the water,
neither the Pacific-pounded shores
nor the beautiful Victorian houses,
not even the Golden Gate Park
where now a hummingbird flits among the flowers,
the unemployed cricket gives free concerts -
neither the grass chanting ancient Indian songs
like a chorus,
nothing
nothing here reminds me of the aroma
of cherry trees in bloom.
The tourists pass by oblivious
(along Powell Street and Market Street or Union Square)
as their eyes count their vanishing dollars;
the dozing vagrants take little interest.
Five black men with cubist faces
as in a Picasso painting
strain over exotic drums and congas
(whose names I never learned) and sing the blues....
To love you, baby, is like smoking two packs a day,
That is to say, I hate myself because I love you, baby,
It's the end of November, I'm off to New Orleans, baby
I'm gonna find another baby, baby... O baby!
How did I ever get here?
There, in just a few weeks, the cherry trees will bloom,
April and May quickly pass, June's coming to an end
and the sun blackens the cherries, spills their violet juice
as the best and sweetest cherries drop to the earth
where pale, swollen bugs assail them, drain them -
ideal vision of the universe
armies of ants attacking the sweet pulp
discarding only the pits-the spirits of the cherries
which just next spring will plunge, unravel their roots -
a machinery so precise
that no wire can melt,
no system malfunction or short-circuit.

Who Woke Me Up This Morning?
not the idea of revolution or anarchy
not an earthquake or fire
not a nightmare or return to the old country
not my drunken roommate from Warsaw
but the garbage men
three young Italians shouting to each other
in their sonorous tongue
three boys (as in the dreams of young girls)
from Palermo, Naples or Venice
who came to San Francisco to earn a few dollars
born in the Republic of Dreams
imagined by poets and painters
architects and sculptors
opera singers
clamorously they drag the shiny dumpsters
full of garbage
towards the dumptruck
which awaits them with the patience of a mother
here by the curb
the whole street awakes
the Irish brothers cursing because they were up till two
drinking beer in a bar
the Asians furious because they work two jobs
and need their sleep
and I promise myself
never again to rent a room with windows
facing the street-
in short, we all envy those Italians
their well-paying job
until the morning, cross-eyed thief of men's dreams
with a smile like a child
hidden behind the rooftop chimneys
smiles with sunlight

As I Gazed Out of the Window
On My Thirtieth Birthday
If I were an artist I would paint myself
into Henri Rousseau's "The Dream"
sitting on the settee beside the beautiful nude
named Jadwiga.
I would sit down beside her softly, imperceptibly,
with a face of stone-God be my witness-
I would not dare
to kiss her forehead, let alone touch those breasts
so redolent of the apple of Good and Evil.
I would praise the beauty of her body,
not fearing the jungle-flowers,
the exotic birds,
the night-creeping moon,
the pink serpent,
the pair of lions,
nor the twilight born of the dense jungle,
nor the howls unleashed among the cobweb of branches.
I am not an artist, I cannot paint
the female body, a flower, a bird,
I am who I am-today is my birthday
if I hadn't lost my bus-pass
I would go downtown
where beautiful women haul their gifts,
the men chase buses
and traffic lights
only at crossroads far beyond the city
raise the tired shoulders....
The holidays-in San Francisco-
the inescapable eyes of beggars-
I pretend that I don't hear their pleas,
smile half-heartedly when they wish me a good day,
thank me for what I didn't give them.
Once I had more courage, I spoke with them,
gave them change, cigarettes,
I shook their hands,
they told me of their lives,
named so many diseases -
showed me empty shirt sleeves, empty trouser legs
wooden limbs,
decaying legs, ulcers on their hands,
gums filled with pus, rotted teeth,
I saw pictures of their families,
medals earned in Vietnam,
positive HIV tests -
for a few moments of my time they were ready
to share their lives, drag from deep in their pockets
papers, documents that proved
they existed, were alive despite human and computer memory...
As I gaze out of my window-today is my thirtieth birthday -
the suns descends on the moral sky,
one of the clouds reminds me of Yorrick's skull
beneath which the Earth, a terrified cockroach, scatters.
I pull the shade, I turn on the television,
today is my...

The Last Surrealistic Dream of Soldier L.Z.*
your father, a golden-headed sunflower
crushed you with the weight of his head
breaking your body like glass-crash
a little girl with a swollen stomach
inflamed like the oven in a foundry
gathered your pieces
heating them inside her for many days
and thus you arose from glass, paper, coal
love, wind, hope
a little girl became your mother
33 years later a machine gun
barred its teeth like a rabid dog-
were you afraid when your glass heart
shattered into a 1001 pieces
and dragons, people, rats, extinct birds
lay around you like a smashed
grand piano, the keyboard
red-and-white bones of a ribcage
where a polydactyl octopus
played Chopin
and the black scissors of the Death-swallow
cut round coffins out of the air
as four angels carried you to heaven
because dead soldiers who fought for freedom
can only go to heaven from the battlefield
and you wept and wept
so desperately did you want to live
that tear which glimmers below
is the earth, homeland of all people

American Poets
The American poets I know
remind me of a giant
prehistoric bird
who still has claws and scales
is too heavy to get off the ground
or perch on a branch
but stubbornly gazes into the sky
and studies his reflection in the stars.
The American poets I know
like music from the 60's and 70's
Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, Joplin
Hendrix, Led Zeppelin,
smoke marijuana, drink beer
write poems about Vietnam
use titles like '67, '68
despise politicians
and can't stand New Age music.
The American poets I know
read French poetry
nineteenth-century poets, Whitman
Dostoyevsky, Albert Camus
Poe, Ginsberg
letters to the young Rilke
Blake, Eliot, etc.
The American poets I know
can't tell me
why there's no poetry, any poetry
in Newsweek, Time, People, the New York Times
Washington Post, Playboy, San Francisco Examiner
USA today, Penthouse, etc.
The American poets I know
won't tell me
why their pictures aren't
on the front pages, or any of the pages
of the above-named newspapers
though there's pictures of the Pope
politicians, presidents, naked women
sports stars, spies, astronauts
rock and movie stars
communists, murderers
Pepsi cola and hamburgers.
The American poets I know
live in San Francisco
a city where there's 4.5 poets per square yard,
when these poets write
they paint their faces in bright colors
wear leather, carry mace
and charge out for the hunt:
the poetry they hunt is a wild animal
which you never feed or even touch
but which has lived in America
since the end of the third ice-age.

We Like To Drink
born
in the 50's of the twentieth century
children of children of the lost generation
we sleep in cold beds
coffins
from drawers and earth we pull
history
the old coat of democracy
take them
to the rector's chemical cleaners
we like to drink
talk nonsense
we don't believe the legend of the dragon
with seven heads
but we believe
there are people
who don't sleep at night
think only
of how to help us...
the magician can't conjure
a herring in cream
unless there are cows
a fleet of fishermen
not to mention clean water
let's leave big words
to those who can't
speak well
or to lovers.

Chicago

Chicago

Hot Butcher for the World
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat
Player with the Railroads
and the Nation's Freight Handler
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders.

- Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

In how many dreams and fantasies will you appear,
O city promised, to those who long to change
a worse life for the better, how many of the naive
and over-eager do you deceive and seduce:
how many have seen you transform
things material into things fantastic,
how many of the sick will you heal,
how many of the healthy sicken,
how many have burned in your flames,
how many been fire-purged for eternity,
how many passed through life with a dancing step
to the rhythm of your music,
and how many grew dizzy from dancing?
Chicago - 20th century Jerusalem of the world's Jews,
in renown surpassing Krakow, Warsaw, Gniezno, Prague,
Bratyslawa, Dublin, Zagrzeb, Wilno, Kijow.
City-lips singing of your riches and splendor to those born
in one-room apartments, crushing poverty.
City-dream at the mouth of the Chicago River
at Lake Michigan's shore, Eden's certified guarantee
for the multitude, land of eternal happiness
where the crowds of immigrants long to see
the new Jerusalem, raised among the multilingual swarms,
carpenters, cooks, computer programmers,
sailors, engineers, doctors, lawyers, analysts-
Christ on his donkey in the midst of a longing proletariat,
those able-bodied still waiting for their chance,
their abilities known only to themselves.
How many of them horde letters, postcards with your likeness,
like a treasure - why is it so strange that...
city - capital of the Lithuanians, Poles, Mexicans
city - mother of the black man's blues
city - slaughterhouse for millions of animals
city - granary of Midwest America
city, where we run for bread and money,
an easier life, to build happiness, realize our dreams
city, your smiling face turned towards the lake
whose waves resist translation
as a child's prayer to Santa Claus,
heart greater than the Atlantic's
swathed in a tattered coat of fog,
yet the kingdom of dreams torn from distant, wild places
and topped with a prince's crown, still radiates the aroma
of leaves, roots, sweat, blueberries, wind:
O city of a million immigrants from white Europe,
golden Asia, black Africa,
the brown inhabitants of South America,
who disregard all notions of nationality,
who all believe in you, not just their dreams:
how many dazzling ideas are realized here,
how many tragedies played out?
Chicago - city, pulse of life for the multitude
whose names are forgotten today,
but once were so real, alive
beer-mugs in their hands, women at their fingertips,
you call with the voice of Lake Michigan:
Come to me, one and all, with your dreams,
barefoot paupers, those starving in your own countries,
those unemployed at home,
weighed down by life's burden,
you, who still wish to be richer than you are
you, whose banks stay open six days a week
you sweet dreamers, young men, freeloaders
come everyone to the shore, sing in one voice
the song of the city, your mother's song:
sweet home Chicago.

The Legend of Chicago
With headaches, heartaches, tear-filled glass eyes
or even without pain, they created the legend of the city
which they'd never seen, sung its charms:
the mansions of the rich, factories, slaughterhouses,
endless chances to earn money, pay off debts -
described it as they did the fables of the everyday,
the things that are best, bread on the table
a furnished room, broth on Sunday -
acting as if they knew nothing of the city, its beginnings,
the black, the white, the red inhabitants,
the river's flooding, Indians' arrows, beaver
skins, wild onions, dances, hoots, foot-stomping -
all of it ignored because of their greed, avarice, cunning.
There's millions of them, forming the city's drum corps,
passing serene through history, tapping a rhythm for the march
of those who crashed in the ashes of their dreams,
those known as heroes or just lucky men,
though no one has yet found pity or recognition in their eyes
unless they had nerves of steel, hardened fists, a strong head.
The taunt skins of the city sent the echoing rhythm far
over the waters, the mountains, forests, from house to house,
from home to home the blood pulsed like
drum-tap echoes drifting through the air -
they themselves never knew when they became the drums
where life thumps its palms on their back, playing
love's song to the homeland,
the hymn of those who ventured forth at dawn and never returned
following the drumming voice of their hearts,
the legend of the city
whose fame only a setting sun could dim.

Carl Sandburg
I remember the first lesson from your handbook of poetry:
"be careful when you use delicious words,
don't let them loose, it's hard to haul them back,"
and yet when I think of you, Chicago, Halsted Street,
immigrants from the four corners of the earth,
the Poles whom you described with sympathy and irony,
your compassion for the poor, for those who work hard,
the Downtown street named after you, Lincoln your hero,
I get the impression that you used words tough as the chains
that bind convicts to prison walls,
strong as the steel from the foundries in Gary, Indiana,
sharp as knives which cut to the bone,
and your faith in people,
the miraculous faith that moves mountains...
in people who survive forever, though swindled,
sold... will always survive because of their sturdy roots -
often we meet one another in the city which you
do not know, which I never visited before,
shoulder to shoulder we march along its streets,
visit the prairies beyond Chicago,
the ripening apples in Michigan,
strawberries in Wisconsin, fishing in Minnesota.
I'm grateful to you, you taught me, showed me much
though you're not a poet of parlors or classrooms,
after you I repeat,
"I am the grass, I cover all,"
grass that's covered many an old haunt, many of my battles,
that covers spots known only to me, to me
privately: Austerlitz, Waterloo, Verdun, Gettysburg,
I am the grass that grows greener the more it drains
blood from the corpses it covers, I am the grass
ashamed of nothing, I grow around churches
and in cemeteries,
around the houses of the rich and in roadside ditches.

A Letter to Walt Whitman
We speak of you often here, Mr Poet
my friends eagerly mention your poetry
discuss it with great regard.
I, sir, still remember you from Poland,
from San Francisco where I discovered you anew.
I especially liked your straw hat
and your long beard, that splendid gray beard
shaped like a stack of hay,
which still haunts the dreams of young boys
from the Market-Castro district.
I saw your photograph (in numerous bars
in San Francisco), the fury in your eyes,
and the self-confidence written across your face.
I imagine, sir, how you must have walked
along the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn
with your great gray stack of hay,
windblown it fell across the barn of your heart.
It must have been much the same on the prairies,
in the field hospitals
where, sir, in your enormous palms you held
the hands of young men dying for that American
Democracy which you so revered.
Mr Whitman, I'd love to go for a walk with you
in the fall, when poets sharpen their pens,
you, sir, best know what that means,
the humidity and the fog lift, the present moment ripens.
How much the patience, the great effort needed
to see this, to penetrate it, describe it, declare:
Passage to India!
Struggles of many a captain, tales of many a sailor dead,
Mr Whitman, reluctantly I end this letter
(so that I may avoid mere enumeration),
but now after writing I feel much better.
Your muse, sir, smiles on me when
I meet her strolling along the streets of Chicago.
P.S. I forgot to add:
Your songs, sir! Your songs!
a wind-breath from the prairie
here where I live I feel that wind
that sweetness.

Memorial Day
The heroes are sleeping-don't ask what they're dreaming -
surprise has sealed their lips, they can't ask questions;
flowers in vases arranged like broaches in the scarf
of evenly-mowed grass
which elegantly and aesthetically covers the graves;
the children chase a ball through the park,
their shouts thickening the air,
frightened squirrels leap through the tree-tops,
women spread colorful, checker-patterned tablecloths
on the picnic tables
slice onions and fruit
wonder whether the barbecue sauce
from Texas or New York is better
sprinkle seasonings over the chicken and beef,
men fan the charcoals
wake the fire into life, blow the ash away
wonder: will the Bulls
win the championship this year?
the beef grows brown
smoke saturates the songs of the birds
the echoes of children, buzzing of a fly
jars of condiments, juice and soda bottles
stand ready like soldiers from the honor guard
their rifles aimed straight into the sky
the sun, relentless, draws out the lazy day
from hour to hour
till it collapses in fatigue and darkness...
the American Holiday

symbol of sloth and gluttony, neighborly chats and picnics
the flight of the bee in search of nectar through meadows
of Memorial Day Sidewalk Sales.

Love Chicago-Style
Love Chicago-style is far from perfect,
but it's the best cure for loneliness,
balsam for the soul afflicted, a bird singing at dawn,
an immense snow-capped mountain, a foaming river,
the wheel of fortune, a basket full of flowers.
She's 52, Asia's grandmother, family in Mońkach,*
he's 39, married, working overtime
with a wife and three kids near Tarnów -
we can imagine the yearning of his soul
his face twisted by sorrow, his eyes narrowed
how her voice, like that of an actress, cheers him
till words swell in his throat; she guides him,
helps him choose a dress for his wife, shoes for his daughters,
takes on the burden of a new life:
she'll sew on a button, cook soup, make sandwiches for work,
choose the most beautiful cards for the holidays.
But it's only his third year here
the Chicago River will flow for sometime
before he gets money in his pocket
grows accustomed to the isolation
of immigrant life, understands
the difference between heaven and earth;
for her it's only a year or two until
the house is done, then back to her husband,
family, grandchildren.
Her strong peasant face
betrays no sadness or fatigue
even in her thoughts she never complains:
you won't catch her crying
or in any other compromising act.

Autumn 1995
They've been in Chicago for only five months
but already they've done much, achieved
the greatest success of their lives
(or so they wrote their family).
He found a job with a cleaning service
she baby-sits the children of wealthy Hindoos
from what she says, from his graceful gestures
it's clear that they're happy.
Though their dreams are still just dreams
both of them quite young, barely over 30
refined, educated, raised in good families
they're not afraid of work, just poverty
in the autumn afternoon they stroll along the empty street.
They look at the lawns cut so precisely
the trimmed hedges
and lazily they embrace each another
just a few more steps and she'll vanish
into one of the houses.
But what he feels now isn't happiness
they've grown quiet, their separation is about to begin
the last long moment-heavy like a stone
before he says: I'll see you in a week
take care of yourself, don't work too hard.
And now he tries to kiss her
so that the taste of her lips
stays with him for six lonely days and nights.

Green Card
When he opened the letter addressed
Immigration Office, he fell back in shock
the news hit him like a hurricane
knocked his mind out of commission
he held his breath, wept like a kid:
a butcher since the age of eight, his hands bloody
the freezer's air mangling his fingers
face tinged with a leaden hue -
a man without fond emigration memories,
passions, desires - who'd received his green card.
Though long ago he'd abandoned his dreams,
his fury and early ambitions
he'd received his green card,
the eyes once dimmed saw the green of life
his deafened ears-heard
voices echoing from afar:
never again would he be a scorned "Pollack,"
half-witted immigrant, hanger-on
now he could roar back:
yes, he'd received his green card
his flesh affirmed it, blood pounded in his skull
the enflamed letters seared his eyes
his heart, once ashes, blazed into life.

Collan Fitzpatrick
Collan Fitzpatrick goes to an Irish pub
to drown his sorrows in green Irish beer;
I hear him curse the loss of a cuckoo egg
(the love-fruit of hippies from Sunnyville, California)
his mother, a drug-addict, was never good to him
though certainly she loved him -
nonetheless, love isn't always a good thing,
the sad life doesn't have to be debilitating;
Collan, a young man of twenty
his body shaped like a marble Greek god, laments:
blond-haired Kasia from Białystok* dumped him -
what's the use now of his English-Polish dictionary,
all the difficult words he memorized?
"Kocham cię jedyna..."
bitterly, bitterly he greets me,
the loss of love weighs him down like knight's armor
the sacrifice of love has dyed his eyes with despair
suffering, he repeats, "Everything is over,"
but I can't help him or cheer him in his misery
maybe it's best that he suffers when still young
and grows more cheerful with age,
but how do I explain that to him?...

Kawafis in Chicago
We decided to meet in a small Greek cafè
in Chicago's Greek Town, on Palm Sunday;
he'd just come back from Alexandria,
he'd never been as charming or as sincere as on that day,
though I don't like Greeks (I've worked for them,
they're stingy, cunning, don't always keep their word).
But Konstanidos made a good impression on me
he was satisfied: the trip hadn't been exhausting,
and the British company
for which he works had given him a raise;
he drank his coffee black, a Chicago Sun Times was on the table,
beside it a bottle of cognac - he surprised me,
handing me pictures from Alexandria, saying:
"Look what they did to that beautiful city."
We're separated by giant, legendary obstacles:
life and death, seas and oceans, mountains and valleys,
youth and age, birthplaces;
yet he was there, kept his word, came,
wired-rimmed glasses perched on his big nose,
a well-worn suit over his slender body,
his pale face in the cafè's faint light recalled
the face of an ancient Greek hero, though he was just the son
of a merchant, a clerk on a business trip,
calmly he smoked his cigarette:
"You had important news for me.
What kind of news?" I whispered nervously.
"I've been waiting a long time."
"There is no news," he said calmly,
"nor those legendary obstacles -
the barbarians made them up."

A Bakery on Chicago Avenue
I met her in a bakery on Chicago Avenue
in the Ukrainian Village
a beautiful female face, though marked by time;
she was buying bread and needed change
I handed her the money
saw her delicate smile
read - with some difficulty - her Cyrillic lips,
she put the loaf in a plastic bag
and walked away, leaving me the thought
of her beautiful smile...
- that crazy Russian woman,
said the salesgirl,
she doesn't work, she begs, maybe steals
she'll outdrink any man
and though she's hungry, the bread is for pigeons
- Yes, yes, I nodded,
these days one rarely sees such women
such a smile, such lips.

Maxwell Street
Where is my heart?
I heard these words sung
by a fat black woman
on Maxwell Street in Chicago.
She sat on an empty fruit crate
at her feet two men, like cherubs
lay half-slumped, smiling in surrender.
With an old acoustic guitar in hand
wrapped in a dark-brown plastic bag
she sang the blues, her accent thick, difficult.
Where is my heart?
she looked like a black saint
beautiful, majestic, a goddess
of the distant cotton fields.
Her words, drenched with humidity, sun
pain, nostalgia, wind
whirled over my head.
Where is my heart?
I wondered with a feverish
heart - I don't have one,
I told myself.

Three Mexicans with a Refrigerator
I met them at the corner
of Damen and Division
(the one-time Polish neighborhood).
Three Mexicans with a refrigerator
they found somewhere on the street
or in the garbage.
Like gigantic ants,
a pine needle on their backs,
they march the path of the human jungle.
Just the usual, so begins
the new life of immigration
without a chair, bed, table, job.
But with a strong back
nerves of steel
and deep faith in the Cross.

Letters to Pieszyce from Chicago
First Letter
You ask how I'm living? Now after so many years
when I've stripped my life of so many
useless things, I live my own life.
I've purged the riotous life within and my thoughts
focus on creating a place for
all those things which really are
essential to life. I'm not planning
any journeys, I need a little time
to live for myself, for poetry.
I tiptoe through life carefully so that
I don't trip again, or fall.
I don't run to the world
with outstretched arms.
And so I don't suffer because of this, or from
poverty. I have so much to offer.
Second Letter
Am I happy? Naturally.
I'm happy and I feel how the happiness
floods my veins. You can't be
happy and not know this. I imagine
that in heaven it's like this. Happiness
seeps into my bones, stills my thoughts, reality
settles down and doesn't goad
the heart to tears. I am happy like
an angel, though I don't do any
good deeds. Chicago is gray, dirty,
dangerous, beset more and more
by the unemployed, evil festers everywhere,
but I am happy. Here I've found
my heaven, though different from what I dreamed of.
How easy happiness becomes
for those who don't seek sensual pleasures
among the flowers.
Third Letter
I haven't written because I'm well.
It's hard to write about happiness. It's much
easier to express pain and despair. Pain
creates a constant awareness. Makes us stand
at attention. When we're unhappy we want
the whole world to know. Happiness we save
only for ourselves. We guard it in case
someone might be spying on us.
I am happy so I don't write, there's nothing
to write about. I'll write when I'm unhappy.
About the unhappiness I've met. Of un-
fulfilled dreams, of disasters. I'll write more
when life knocks me in the jaw, when I'm
humiliated in America. I'll write, I'll write about everything.
Just not about my happiness.
Be patient, wait for my letters.
Fourth Letter
How do I like Chicago? For many years I lived in
San Francisco, but never thought about whether
I liked it there or not.
I just lived there. In Chicago I like the fall. My
first fall in ten years. Impatiently I wait for
the winter. I love winter and I want it to snow
and snow. I haven't seen real snow for many years, now I miss
the snow. The fall here is enchanting.
I inhale the aroma of fall. My eyes absorb fall's colors.
Yet I would like to hear fall. But I can't. I see how
the leaves drop from their branches to the thick carpet
of the leaves already fallen.
A tremor shakes my heart. I tremble because I know
that falling is not pleasant. If I could hear I'm sure
I would hear the despair of a falling leaf. The long and extended
ahhhhhh....
Fifth Letter
Have I bought a house? No, I haven't bought
a house. I haven't even thought about it.
A house so dear, each brick, each
strip of plaster on the wall. Sentient to the point
of tears. The kitchen open to guests
with a large table, hot tea. I'll never have
such a house again. Now
my house is my imagination. Gingerly
I open the doors, latchkey on a string,
in my heart. I'm careful not to invite
the flames of hope and expectation. I might
scorch or even burn myself.
Sixth Letter
Write me: should an artist have
a family? A good family is
man's greatest fortune.
No amount of gold equals the love
of a family. Every wound, just not a wound
to the heart. All anger, just not
the wife's anger. Each misfortune, just not
loss of the love of one's children.
A family is the greatest treasure.
An artist should have a family,
to be happy for, to live for,
because he'll achieve much. But if an artist
is not lonely, though alone -
he'll achieve even more.
Seventh Letter
What do I live on? That is, where do I
get money? In the States no one
tells you how much they make, what
they live on. That's why people are happy.
They don't waste time crunching other people's
numbers. Nor stirring useless emotions,
jealousy or curiosity. Curiosity is
the first step towards learning how to suffer.
Does life mean no more than food,
the body no more than clothing? The poet lives
off crumbs and thanks the creator for
what he has. Unlike the others
he's not a pig, pushing its way
to the trough - who first gorges
then knocks the trough over with his snout.
Eighth Letter
Do I struggle with poverty? Poverty, the inseparable
companion of all immigrants,
and I have made a pact for the present. She moved in
after the good old days and moved out
after the good old days, sometime ago. I don't know
her address, but each moment someone tells me
they've seen her. She calls sometimes.
Asks, What's new with you? Could I
drop by for a bit? If at all possible
I avoid her. But before the end
of each month, she still invites herself over
on payday. At night she creeps through the kitchen,
slams the door of the empty refrigerator.
And I, woken by her noise, pull the sheets over my head
and laugh heartily at her.
But I have to be quiet because on other
nights she comes to my bedroom,
sits down on the bed and looks deep into
my eyes. So deep my stomach churns.
Ninth Letter
How do the Poles live in America? In an emptiness that
is so immense that one Pole doesn't see
the next. Then selfish thoughts of "me" stretch
the emptiness. In my youth I had powerful wings,
I soared high up into the infinite.
I forgot that the earth nourished me.
How many people would trade their friends
for a car? Family happiness
for money? They value their possessions
above themselves. They don't
notice how quickly they'll lose their hunger
for culture, how quickly they'll be clothed in indifference.
Tenth Letter
Do I have friends? Naturally.
I'd like to write you about the squirrels.
In Chicago we have only gray ones, never red.
Near Logan Square (where I live) there are
many trees and even more squirrels.
Often I feed them. They're
experts in saying goodbye.
Before I even open my lips, I hear the rustle
of their vanishing forms. But instead of calling,
Come back, come back, I manage
only to sigh.
Eleventh Letter
You must be crazy! No,
no, I'm not crazy. I know that immigration
provides the anodyne for all mental
disorders. No one spread the bacteria
to us, we cultivated it ourselves, in
our minds and hearts. Some
relight the flames of the hearth, their
hearts cold even to the marrow of their bones.
Others unveil their gold-embroidered
pennants and ask the way. Yet
others lift their faces to the sky. In
the sky drift many eagles, all mothered
by the crow. No, no, I haven't gone insane,
I've only turned my back
on the world. Is that insanity?
Twelfth Letter
Am I lonely? Not at all.
Those who like to dance never feel
lonely. I rise with a dancing step
and jump into bed with a dancing leap.
Loneliness includes friendship with those who
pity themselves and can't attain their
dreams. Self-pity is the sister of loneliness. Pity
lives in the heart. Drive the pity away
and you won't hate people,
the world, God. Dance, dance, don't stand
in place. To fall while dancing is
much more pleasant than to fall while
standing in place. Dance, dance...
Thirteenth Letter
Do I think of Pieszyce? But of course. How
could I forget? I remember everything exactly,
like the Internal Revenue Service. Effortlessly
I stroll along the streets, greet my friends
by name. No, I don't feel any pain when I think
about this. In the same way I remember San Francisco,
without pain. With no increase in heartbeat I see
pigeons, like in Pieszyce, on the roof, here beside the chimney.
I sit on a bench with Jola under the apple tree in the garden.
Old lady Kuriat pumps water. The startled gaze of Jola
escapes to safety among the branches. I see the scene
but hear no sounds. I observe the verdure
of the bushes. I rip it out with the roots, but it
still blooms from the bottom up. Verdure without
roots.
Fourteenth Letter
What is poetry to you?
It's easier to say what it isn't.
Naturally, it's not a source of income,
of course, I don't live for it. Certainly,
it's hard to trick it. It's easier
to cheat the court, the state. Easiest
to cheat yourself - never poetry. It asks
that you sacrifice everything, even your life.
Many poets have sacrificed their lives.
Poetic talent isn't the knack
for self-promotion, or written prophecy.
Regarding the silence of a pause, explaining
metaphors: that's not poetry either. Seizing
the moment with comma-shaped hands, gagging
the lips with an exclamation mark: no, not poetry either.
You need a heart, a great heart, so great
that you don't have to search for it in your depths.
Such a heart bursts into flame from just a spark-
the handful of ashes that remains: that's
poetry.
Fifteenth Letter
Do you believe in God? Yes, I'm a man
who believes. But I don't know if believing
means religious. People who believe are like
lovers who long for one another, search for
one another - a search without end.
They see not only the meadow, but each
stalk of dancing grass as it somersaults -
what those lovers feel is the secret of love towards
God.
Sixteenth Letter
Did you know that your friend Robert Czachorowski
passed away? Yes, I know: he left three children,
all of them infants. His mother wrote to me
about his death. A car accident:
the screech of wheels, screams of people, terror
twisting the face, eyes wide open-
astonished. Then glass shattering, bones snapping,
Blood. Robert pulled from the midst of life,
plunged into death. Do you remember
the death of old Mrs. Kaczmarek who lived at
18 Kosciuszko Street? June's heat drove her
out of the kitchen. She sat down on a garden bench. A fly,
buzzing, lands on her nose. The salad, chives,
sorrel growing evenly on the bushes. The soup boiling over,
the old woman sleeping. What's she dreaming of? Why
is she smiling, showing those toothless gums?
So radiant. So happy.
So calm. A scarecrow for the neighborhood
rabble. Toy with ears begging to be pulled.
She's going to heaven. Forgiving us for stomping
her bushes, uprooting her flowers - shooting her chickens
with a slingshot, but above all drenching her cat Saba
with water.
Seventeenth Letter
Are you interested in politics? No, no,
I'm not interested. Politics disgust me.
Repulse me. I despise
any sort of ideology. I think politicians
are swindlers, thieves, cheats, crooks.
Inside I'm distraught, embittered
embarrassed by their behavior. Two percent
of the populace (all millionaires) rules the country. Money
equals power. The powers-that-be
break the laws. I am afraid. I fear
for my safety. I see the government
as a personal enemy. I wouldn't give
power to the poets, but at the same time I won't bow
to any millionaires who don't read poetry.
Eighteenth Letter
So you've escaped to freedom, and what's next?
Now even you are free, and what's next?
Don't you feel free? You neither sin
through speech nor writing, you proclaim the truth. But
no one listens to you. The fisherman throws his nets,
bankers steal, politicians practice their language
of lies. Neither you nor I benefit
from our freedom. You can't afford it,
I know it's price.

A Bird in Song
Today I heard a bird in song
hidden in the branches of a birch
beside the Chicago river, singing a love-song
cheerfully, enticing his beloved.
Tracing boundaries to be crossed, with my eyes
I saw girls unbutton their shirts
an elder woman dozing, a boy throwing his ball
the bird lifting its wings to alight, silence.
Today I heard a bird in song
five barges drifted heavily along the river
the city crouched before me like a statue
the bird hung on a thread of silver air.

America

If I had your love, America
If I had your love, America
gold-feathered bird, daily at dawn
chanting the song of the living people
if I felt your burning heart
if your love was my inspiration
I would sing for you and of you, America
up, up to the tip of the Sears Tower
I would be your beloved, redolent of the dollar
assessing the canyon-wide streets
the prairies of wealthy suburbs
I'd declare you the only one just as we live only once
the world's one creation
the only Jerusalem, the only God, the only Vistula
if I had your love, America
if but a beam of your love
struck my heart, enflamed it
if once, only, only once
I found your feather, America, gold-feathered bird
I'd race from San Francisco to New York
declaring, you are love
you are beauty
you are wisdom
you are truth
you are health
I'd write so many beautiful poems about you
about life and youth, because you are life and youth
because you created a new vocabulary
for the needs and hopes of mankind
for the poor and the rich
and I'd speak not with the sword or the pen
but with the wide trunk of a Black Forest lime
if I had your love, America!

The Prairie

to Carl May, loyal reader

Prairie of boyhood desires, of bison and Indians on horseback,
above the clouds spread like fox-skins drying in the wind,
a sea of grass, the gusts of wind breathing mournful songs
of those departed, whose souls drift over the prairie,
wind attentive to the words, the tone, the phrasing-
no walls or bricks, windows or doors
or straw beds, clatter of horsehoofs,
a child's cries-only the wind whistling and silence,
everything in its place.
Prairie, for a long time now, in your heart
you've carried that arrow once aimed at the West,
and you've endured it, grown used it:
the world of Ionic columns, of Jewish tomes
bereft of their marble temple-floors, matters little:
the grass, feast of horses, is your sister,
the rabbit-chasing eagle your brother,
the light of day your God, because God is the light.
The prairie calls you with its wide stretch of solitude,
with childhood desires, you who envisioned it
long before setting foot on its turf,
to realize that the wind sings of no one but you,
you are the lonely, the beautiful, the wild prairie
set beneath the glass tent of star-covered sky-
and when you understand, you'll long to be nothing
but the prairie, your face towards the sky,
thirty-odd years of age, the health of a buffalo,
strong like an immigrant, more devout than
that ancient energy dormant now in the roots of prairie grass.

The Mississippi
The majestic mother, the Mississippi river
recalls the songs of childhood, a crystal ball,
the name itself is mellifluous and hypnotic
with the mystery and allure of a colossal flower
name of a girl with enchanting eyes,
the music of violins, dreams of the sun's magnitude,
fantasies of kissing my beloved's lips
by moonlight on that bench beneath the old tree,
hymn of the man who found a star from heaven
foretold some thirty years before...
I stand at the river's edge;
she murmurs, whispers, hums, speaks, sidles up
to me like no one else, but I do not become her,
though I am of the same blood,
her chosen laborer, prodigious scribe of her history,
she keeps me at a distance
yet her cold, her icy response
does not discourage me from helping her,
she is someone talented, someone who deserves praise,
for her I have great respect,
within her I see hidden dangers, tempests,
the groans of a woman in labor, the smile of a mistress;
Mississippi, that sweet name drenched in sweat,
swaying to the barge's song, the song of pain and joy,
I think of her with gratitude and with rapture just like
when I was a little child, throwing
stones into the stream that runs through Pieszyce.

Illinois
In memory of the Indian tribes of Illinois who occupied
this land long before white men ever set foot upon it.
Many immigrants wandered into this state,
there was no room for them in the homeland,
their dream became a country flat like corn-cakes.
The Indian tribes of Illinois had never heard of us
nor seen us, our homelands in a distant
ill-defined Europe meant little,
our education, our manners made no difference,
their prophets hadn't prophesied our arrival
(though they waited for white gods with white beards)
and even if in their deepest dreams they had glimpsed something
in vain they asked the rain-god for interpretation,
the prairie ghost about our origins.
Those arriving heard much about the blood-soaked Indian country,
the big, bounded, green ocean of fantasies
(the immigrant agencies had persuasive ads)
the aroma of new-cut grass was the prairie, a herd of buffaloes
grazing in the valleys, a heaven for the cattle-breeder,
the colorful sky, beautiful houses, the quiet, happy life -
yet how did these hopes turn out?
justice was in the hands of lawyers and thieves,
the advertised happiness, silence, freedom
arrived only with the third generation of descendants...
Beautiful are our dreams, a leaden ball won't scar them,
bullets can't pierce them: the immigrant is invincible,
couching in tents beneath a blue
star-spangled sky, awakening with a face astonished,
aimed at the four empty corners of the earth-
they had divine justice on their side,
hunger had been abandoned across the ocean,
the rest was still to come:
the incessant, anxious now that waited for them at each
half-step.

Fire
I know you well: you live in my stomach
shimmer incessantly in my brain
span the magnitude of a thousand suns
and each second you speak to me
you raise the pressure in my veins
stir my ambitions and desires.
You must be God,
so beautiful, diligent, an example
which seems unattainable.
God for those who believe
an immense, ancient volume of the world's history
the song of the traveler or the sailor
a blade of grass, a cherry branch in bloom
the lark's song, murmur of a mountain stream.
You drift from life to life
leaving only ruins and despair
in your wake, yet we fail to realize
who you are, from where you arise
when each time you burst
from the ashes-the fierce wind that flares
passions, the wings of angels ascending to heaven
with all things mortal, to God
who thinks even of us, burns beauty
into the forms of our bodies -
the more beautiful we are,
the more the goodness dwells within us.

Desires
Desires are ascribed to young people
to beautiful, agile bodies, innocent souls
strong muscles, intrepid hearts
lips in search of kisses
firm hearts never touched by the despair
of old age or care, or distress, or the salt of tears
which preserve the face;
desires, God's gift to ordinary
people so that through them they might start to resemble
those desires, dreams, ambitions.
Oh! to look along the waters of Lake Michigan
but not to reminisce
as reminiscing kills desire,
to taste the sweet sugar of future days
to desire and desire, more and more
to have desires, sweet desires
akin to a rapacious heart
immortal desires, to praise
great ideas: to be not hungry, to live satisfied
even if an immigrant,
desires are essential
as life grows and surges in the veins:
whoever declares that he "desires"
raises his sword and shield towards the sky
in a sign of victory.

The Rain Song
My heart has dried out like a clod of earth, my thoughts turned to dust,
a few words from my friends would be like a water-drop, but they
are gone: the great waters of life have receded and only my arms, my oars
remain-which way should I sail, to which wave surrender?
I need rain, a storm in my life, floods to fill
the jug of life, of my lungs with moisture, drench my face with sweet hope,
I need thunder and lightning to tear through my mind,
flash against my thoughts, clear the clouds of dust, ready
My body's altar for the cleansing waters from heaven,
for the bee, envoy of the Highest, to land on my heart
and raise a honeycomb, as the wind, great conductor of
the stiffly - bowing trees, prepares them to play music,
To prophesy the waving branches, the singing rain, songs as
ancient as the ocean, God's first prayer as
he separated the waters from the land, carefully teaching the rain to sing
against the dry earth, the rock, the tree, the man,
in the rustling of the wind.

Arriving in San Francisco

to the author of Sailing to Byzantium
This is the country for the young. Immigrants from the world over
crammed into small rooms, surviving only on what is still to come
like a bird set upon a bough, they chant songs of the sunrise
praising what has already begun, but hasn't yet become.
San Francisco needs hands for labor, the hands need work
the stomachs food, the capitalists capital, the banks money,
the thirsty water, the unlucky luck, the singers songs -
every hour California yearns to grant your wishes.
Through the Rocky Mountains, across the oceans
of grass and water it hears
the heartbeats, the sighs of lovers, of the brave,
it sees shriveled hands reaching for what is most in abundance,
it hears the sad, needy voices that call its name.
Arriving in San Francisco is a glimpse (easy on the eyes)
of hills, of the fragrant ocean of women's hair, sweet bodies -
in your mouth another taste, in your eyes another view,
but your heart isn't fooled: this country is for the beautiful, the young.
Like dreams near the morning, the echo among the hills repeats
the words of your predecessors, they greet you vigorously,
you're convinced that you too deserve something, of course,
an empty apartment, a shield from the blows of a life all too eager...
In four colors: green for hope, red for love,
black for the chance to hide in solitude from the world,
gold for gold, as well as envy for everyone
that reads the future in seaweed, in ocean waves.

Baja California
The long-awaited trip south to Mexico
to Ensenada through Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana
came true like a long-awaited prophesy
the color of the sky merged with the color of the ocean,
the wind with desert sand, English with Spanish
the granite cliffs of the shore broke
the foaming manes of ocean waves, the water nestling
on the rocky shelves like delicacies saved for winter
giant gulls soared across the azure plunging
their wings into my imagination,
nature, swaying in the sighs of the wind
restored a dream long-ago forgotten
we scaled the cliffs like fish
discarded by the ocean's powerful fantasies
walked the flat open spaces like proud dancers
along sumptuously adorned tables,
the ocean whispered, the wind chanted, we ate sandwiches,
I dreamed of vanished Indian civilizations, saw that nothing
had changed since the Spanish invasions,
not even the color of the grass...
my muses yet live in the heights of Helikon,
Parnassus, Pindus, still enjoy mountains, streams, history,
gaze into the sky, adore music, sing:
I didn't expect anything, didn't count on anything
knowing how brittle are man's bones
how little his brain matters like credit card
numbers, passport numbers, license plates, the address
of the house where you live-here but the ocean, the beach,
high rocky cliffs teach man humility,
the water and the rock beauty, the sky and the bird dreams,
a few hours away from home, a few hours in the car
were enough to understand that all we achieved
was but a lonely shell on a beach, that a crab hidden
in a rocky gulf, swaying with the water,
could asses the strength of our bodies.
Baja California, kingdom of Poseidon,
a name unknown to the Indians,
striking terror with the sea and the earth,
rain-giver to the plants and animals
swam to me then in a dolphin's silence
struck my heart with his trident, evoking song.

Tijuana
A girl's name, name of a city or river
yet an army of soldiers camped at the border,
Tijuana appears like a rock basking its face
in the Mexican sun, aimed towards the States
great city of a million inhabitants, their legs of rock
ready each moment to hit the road north...
faces of rock, chiseled Aztec, Mayan, Tarachuman
televisions, big water-filled plastic containers at their feet
they sit on the cement bank, gaze towards the border
beyond which lies San Diego,
nourishing mother-goat of the hungry,
animal who's ravished their hopes but still offers some sustenance
poised in the valley and on the hills, a step from paradise...
it takes but a moment of luck to sail
the great concrete channel of the Tijuana river
(another Berlin Wall between the poor and the rich,
navigable only by night) and fulfill their dreams,
pass unnoticed-non-existent-into bliss,
be night or fog, cross the border
in the wind's disguise, as desert sand,
become everything-or at least no more a Mexican,
chiseled face that the American guards fish at ease
from the tourist river flowing north along the highway...
they camp on the cement bank, await their chance
as the Greek army at Troy they have time-a year, five, ten
something must come as long ago the gods foretold;
tense and eager for war, a better life
they bask in the sun, faces growing even more brown
eyes olive in color, wings sprouting at their feet
slowly from men, conquered people, prisoners, nomads
they become soldiers of hope
to whom indifference and insomnia are sisters,
recall the crafty Odysseus
in beggar's rags, set to fool the Americans
play the trick and inside the Trojan horse
(a big truck bound for Chicago) pass
to the other side of the city's, the country's wall
now under attack for so many years,
Troy still defending itself... a big wooden horse.

Charles Bukowski
The man, enigmatic descendant of Silenius
rode the donkey of poetry through the gorges of Los Angeles
was often detained by Satyrs
at the time of the war with the Giants of the Everyday,
fought for the victory of Bacchus
his resonant voice verging towards war-cry,
after the war moved to San Pedro
eagerly smoked cigarettes for many years
at times became quite restless
felt fear, intense loneliness, started to travel
through the ravines and valleys of Los Angeles,
among the howling of the winds and people, the ocean's singing
he never heard the voice of an angel,
saw only donkey-eared men, hearts like Silenius
an ocean vast as the sky and Los Angeles angel-filled,
understood that man is but a small casket stuffed
with various things, one shake and you'll hear
the music of bones, murmur of blood,
grinding of thoughts, the color of hope
dropping to the ground, mixing with ashes...
what happened to those times, Charles, when gorged with desire
you raced to the ocean, that great kingdom
one plunge, one moment beneath the water sufficing
to merge yourself with it forever
though, of course, once there you couldn't smoke
turned instead to harbor bars and hookers
goddesses of life spawned not from ocean foam, but beer?
Now, my life careening between two rails at the California
shore, I salute you from the place where I too
have turned up chasing my Medusas, that is, my Perseus.

Miłosz
He could be a mountain waterfall, or ocean
never a desert nor waste land
a giant Jagiełło oak* in whose shade
the tired traveler will always find rest,
seize bubbles of life-giving oxygen from the air
and breathe poetry in their place-his words are seeds
which grow inside the reader, mature, bloom...
the cornfields sway awaiting the reaper's hand,
he is the moon which turns the tides
as beautiful women toss in restless sleep,
the angel with large bushy eyebrows
shaped like the wings of a bird, frightened
at midnight from its nest, to which it will never again
return, though he still remembers the aroma of the grass,
apples, the pale-white of rooms, shapes of houses, lakes, rivers...
he is the Lithuanian bear, half his life spent
as a resident in the beautiful city of Berkeley
in wondrous California, on Grizzly Bear Hill
where he never growls but sings
that no one has earned our envy, sings of hummingbirds,
of honeysuckle, women's bottoms,
poor Christians watching the ghetto in flames,
of cities where he'll never return, sings to you and to me.
But what does Miłosz mean to me?
a thousand times I've asked myself -
a mother who feeds me, a bright shapely breast
streaked by thin blue veins,
whose life-giving milk I drink in the Chicago heat.
And what does his poetry signify in my life?
Is it a round-trip ticket for distant countries,
for tropical rain forests, northern woods where
a flamboyant, colorful singer jumps from branch to branch,
chanting a song of ancient forests, rivers
whose sands grow warm in the sun
as boulders, with the ease of a butterfly, soar
into the distant galaxies where time flows vertically?
Miłosz - muse living in the shade of the Eucalyptus trees
with a view of the San Francisco Bay, in a city the size of an ant
whose lights reflect in the water like clouds,
a poet true to the ideals of his youth,
straining to hear the sounds of the cricket, looking
into the brightly burning eyes of the cars...
what is he thinking about?
In 1990 I asked him, at a dinner of vodka and herrings,
the sun had already drowned in the Bay, and night
painted the tips of the Golden Gate Bridge ink black;
"Oh, Mr Adam," he sighed, "if I could only
live to be a hundred, then once more turn the meter back to zero."

Joseph Brodski returns to Russia
In the span of one day
I sold two books of Brodski's poems
which had been on my store's shelf for many months,
yet I never realized
that the poet's death had helped me sell the books.
The Russian poet and immigrant, who for many years had lived
in that hub of freedom, Greenwich Village,
among artists and homosexuals, has passed away -
the old rabbit who once fled the ubiquitous
hunting dogs of the worker's union
from the statue of Peter I in Leningrad
to the Jefferson Market Courthouse in New York.
As a boy of seven, he already knew many of life's truths -
that deceit is more useful than algebra,
that even three brilliant communists really aren't so smart,
that poetic talent is a gift from God.
Since the old days, his life at stake, he'd played chess against Death
yet Death caught him off-guard,
sent an icy telegram to Russia
where, in short, the after-life is beautiful;
the homeland is the homeland (even when not beloved)
and now, with obituaries written in Roman type,
America bids him farewell
while Russia greets the poet in Cyrillic:
Joseph Brodski returns to Russia, his true home...
words uttered by the lips of young poets -
in the midst of political upheaval
the black notices appearing in the most popular newspapers;
the immigrant's journey has come full circle,
and in Saint Petersburg someone with a beautiful name
goes out for a walk, wanting to reminisce a little
to consider the future:
now it's certain, Joseph will stay here forever,
never again able to leave.

The Fatherland
There's not another word like it
so dear and sweet, towards which the heart,
like a bird, bursts from the chest -
which draws a fountain of tears, an avalanche of laughter;
a word which embodies everything worthwhile in life,
a rock's opacity, transparence of a drop of water,
the aroma of breadcrust and the taste of ocean sand,
the wind's clairvoyance as it sways the branches of cherry trees
or as it sleeps among the pond-side undergrowth...
the fatherland is a prayer, the graves of one's parents,
the goodness of a mother, a signal-fire beneath the skin,
always a gain, never a loss
the fatherland overwhelms even love and hope
because it is love and hope,
the clearest sound, contraction of the heart, second of recollection...
those who long for it, tread flowers
as a sliver of the old moon shines above them;
the fatherland is old traditions, young girls,
big words, small, cramped houses
where future immigrants are born,
feel passion-the fatherland is poetry
an epic poem of forests and rivers,
people, cemeteries, blood and scars,
a house with a garden and old pear tree, poems in a drawer,
books, photographs, old keys, stamps, postcards,
sunrises and sunsets...
the fatherland - a magical word which endows you with meaning,
the enchanted key to the land of emotions,
home of childhood ghosts, of visions beheld,
unfulfilled dreams which should have come true
twenty years later, in a place ten thousand miles away.

Simple Things
His youth passed away in a country where all
was built to plan, but twice the scale
really there were no plans
everyone building, little actually built
everything in abundance, something always lacking
whatever mattered least-exactly that
missing-the meaning redoubled
(a strange country where the greatest luxuries
are those least in abundance, but don't think of this island)
the workers' party made big promises:
doors but no keys, stairs but no banisters
the homeland but no freedom, church but no God
streets- no black cat-all dead-ended
filled with empty-handed old women
simple things for simple people
homes, cars, sausage,
wine, cigarettes, weather forecasts
people forbidden courage
meatballs for dinner
a priest in the family, an uncle high-up in the party...
though he nor before nor after was ever
so happy, never loved so passionately
so eagerly-was it normal, he asked himself
to fall in love in such an unusual country
to wait till the stars flared in the sky -
he, a singer chanting the song of his love
and praising ordinary day, celebrated night, his beloved's breasts
such beautiful memories, wonder at the woman's
body so overworked from morning to night...
and when he left, never again found such eyes
pale face, sweet lips, such breasts,
stars, a voice so mellifluous.

Trifles
Who'd remember to take them-those trifles-across the ocean,
the knife and the fork, plate and spoon, a garden leaf or some grass,
a mother's smile, a flash of father's eyes, warmth of a lover's lips,
the silence of the last night before departing, the moon's glare?
Such trifles, the chill of dew, whine of a screeching door,
voices, the house's warmth, smoke from the chimney, a dog's barking,
crispness of bread, taste of bacon grease, satisfaction from new shoes,
grating of nerves, heart's beat, a finger at the lips, sighs.
A sunset over the ocean, twilight, silence of a gull...
San Francisco prepares for bed, blinks its big eyes
as night slowly draws its black umbrella over the city
and dread, like a snake, peeks its heard from my pocket, looks around.
Oh, you're beautiful, my beautiful dread, so much of you do I have,
enough for all of California - you won't harm me,
but how did you become so sublime, so conceited?
who adorned you, made you proud as a cat on a couch?
You live in my pocket, in silence, robbed of speech,
but if you could speak, you'd blind us with your words and metaphors,
touch the deepest layers of the heart-though now you're overcome
by trifles (they've been on my mind), I've lost all interest in
you.

Little Tiger
My dearest kitty - little tiger
is my source of happiness;
he sleeps by me, bids me goodbye from the window,
greets me at my first step on the stairs,
makes my heart, though shy, tender and radiant -
he's smarter than Socrates, and when he purrs
in his music I hear a sparrow chirping at dawn,
his four paws are a miracle of nature:
with them he climbs up onto my lap,
proudly glides beside me,
his pelt is a constellation of pleasure
and my fingers-like rockets-plunge into it,
drop headlong, breakneck into a universe of unknown
shivers, raptures, joyous stirrings of the heart -
he lets me pet him, shakes his tail
in a ceremony so secret and solemn
that many a pharaoh never witnessed it.
He stirs a poetry in me,
illuminates me with love swift
as lightning across the sky where
bluebirds soar, though you know you can't
summon them, so let your green eyes,
colored like blue meadows, always be open
while the meows from your lips along the edges
of the milky way, tolling like silver bells
resound to warn me that your bowl
is nearly empty - to caution the hand that feeds you
and pets your extended back which curves
like the brackets enclosing a sentence:
you are, I am.

Elegy for a Car
You've passed away!
you who were my friend for so long.
You've passed away!
and the thought that you're not among the living
draws my tears.
Once more I repeat - you've passed away,
as if I didn't believe it.
I knew so little about you,
about your heart, your desires.
Men created the pain of the soul, of the body -
but what pain did you feel?
Now, when I think of how you coughed, how you strained
just to bring me happiness,
I imagine the love you must have had;
I, of course, fell in love with you at first sight,
you were the source of my wild ideas of freedom,
in you I placed my hopes as I drove to work late at night,
you alone knew my thoughts,
remembered our talks in San Francisco
so marked by fervor and love,
and to me you were the last token of those
California days filled with pride and promise.
With you I slept beneath the dark sky of Nevada
in the desert thinking of Jesus,
you were the companion of my meditations
on the meaning of man's life here on Earth
at the shores of Utah's salt lake,
you were the witness at my wedding,
and I loved you with my purest and deepest self,
believe me, I loved you,
on vacation in Poland
I thought of you, I needed you
my beloved car, dearest friend.
Today is your funeral...
I valued your intelligence,
your knack for silence, for filling your mouth with water,
for leading me to hiding places known only to you
and me, your unique attachment to me.
I never gave you flowers
though I loved you-what do these words mean now
in the face of death? Those were carefree years
of laughter, of breakneck speeds
down Highway 101 to Santa Cruz;
inside your hull I felt safe
though I myself was formed of bones and flimsy skin,
of eyes blue like the sky -
I put two fingers on the steering wheel
and the aroma of blooming eucalyptus flowers filled our bodies...
You've passed away!
May the vulturous hands of men - of mechanics
ripping your body to pieces, be gentle with you.
Believe me, I regret
that I didn't spend more time with you.
Sleep well-some day we'll meet again
in a better world, only you and I
on the celestial highway
in a kingdom of God free from traffic fines.

Chicago City of Hope

Adam Lizakowski

From Pieszyce to San Francisco

Chicago

America

Translator's Preface

My Poems

The Poet

From Pieszyce to San Francisco

The Cherry Bandits

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

Psalm of the Cherry Bandits

Confession of a Hooligan

Grandma Paulina

Aunt Martha

From Pieszyce to San Francisco

San Francisco

Who Woke Me Up This Morning?

As I Gazed Out of the Window

The Last Surrealistic Dream of Soldier L.Z.*

American Poets

We Like To Drink

Chicago

Chicago

The Legend of Chicago

Carl Sandburg

A Letter to Walt Whitman

Memorial Day

Love Chicago-Style

Autumn 1995

Green Card

Collan Fitzpatrick

Kawafis in Chicago

A Bakery on Chicago Avenue

Maxwell Street

Three Mexicans with a Refrigerator

Letters to Pieszyce from Chicago

A Bird in Song

America

If I had your love, America

The Prairie

The Mississippi

Illinois

Fire

Desires

The Rain Song

Arriving in San Francisco

Baja California

Tijuana

Charles Bukowski

Miłosz

Joseph Brodski returns to Russia

The Fatherland

Simple Things

Trifles

Little Tiger

Elegy for a Car