Stop Sign

A beat-up pick-up truck
Comes to a complete stop
At a residential intersection.

“Illegals”, my wife says,
“Nobody drives like that
If their papers are in order”.

Address Book by Antoni Slonimski

In an old address book
I found phone numbers
Of dead friends.
Addresses of burnt houses.
I dial. I wait.
The phone rings.
Someone picks up the receiver.
Silence. I hear breathing,
Or perhaps a whisper of fire.

(translation by JB)

Cheer by Wislawa Szymborska

Darwin.
Supposedly read novels to relax.
But only some of them.
Those that did not end on a sad note.
The sad ones
He would angrily toss into the fireplace.

True or not, I like
To believe this story.

Spanning in his mind so much of
Geography and Time,
He saw so many extinct species,
So many triumphs of the strong
Over the weak,
So many attempts to survive
Futile sooner or later,
That at least in fiction
And its microscale
He had a right to expect a happy end.

And so necessarily: a silver lining,
Lovers reunited, clans making peace
Doubts resolved, faithfulness rewarded,
Fortunes regained, treasures dug up,
Neighbors feeling sorry for being stubborn,
A good name returned, greed shamed,
Old maids marrying distinguished parsons,
Schemers exiled to the other hemisphere,
Forgers thrown down a flight of stairs,
Seducers of virgins racing for the altar,
Orphans adopted, widows finding solace,
Pride humiliated, wounds heeled,
Prodigal sons invited to dinner,
The cup of bitterness poured into the sea,
Choral singing and music everywhere.
And the dog, Fido,
Lost early in Chapter One,
Is again running around the house
Barking joyfully.


(translated by JB)

Cody Books Store

Follow the exiled poet’s footsteps,
To the bookstore
Down Telegraph Avenue,
Where he will find words
Of Maximus of Tyre
(2nd century AD)
And rejoice at his find so much
That he will translate them
And nest his own poem around them,

Where he will note, this being 1968:


“…the Bay, lit up all the way to the Golden Gate,
Transport ships leaving every day,
Filled with soldiers and a substance used to incinerate people.”



The poet will return to his country;
He will be followed by this news item:

“The Cody Books store
In Berkeley was
Closed down after 50 years,
The New York Times reported.

A victim of chain stores, the homeless, and the Internet.”

Betrayals

When he fell in love
With a girl who fancied me,
I promised him I’d keep out,
Which I did, for a short while.

When I left the country,
I promised I’d write to him,
Which I did but then stopped
Because it was so pointless.

When, years later, he found me
We celebrated and I saw
He was an alcoholic and then
I didn’t want to see him anymore.

I was afraid of his drunkenness,
Of his killing himself,
Of his love.

Fortuitous Poem by I.B. Singer

….
No doubt the world is entirely an imaginary world,
But it’s only once removed from the true world.

At the door of the hovel where I lie,
There stands the plank on which the dead are taken away.
The gravedigger Jew has his spade ready,
The grave waits and worms are hungry;
The shrouds are prepared—I carry them in my begger’s sack.
Another shnorrer is waiting to inherit my bed of straw.

When the time comes
I will go joyfully.
Whatever may be there,
It will be real,
Without complication,
Without ridicule,
Without deception.

God be praised…

I Knew Something Bad

“I knew something bad
Was going to happen
To your father,”
My stepmother said.

“I had dreamt
Of your sister;
She was standing
Near an empty house,
Telling me something
Though no words came.

Her boys were with her
Looking just the way they did
At her funeral.

I woke up and found
Your father’s room empty
And the front door ajar.”

Wind

The immigrant Chinese father,
Worried that his son’s ignorance
Of his adopted country’s classics
Would hurt his chances of college,
Found in a drugstore a thick paperback
With bold letters across the cover
Proclaiming an “American Classic”;
He parted with ten dollars to buy
For his son “Gone with the Wind”,
Which his son dutifully attempted to read
Till his friends’ mockery set him free.

Travel Advice for Paul

Of the place
Your grandparents
Were deported to,
Little remains.

Even though
It was a third
Of this city,
If not more.

Poles
Don’t seem to see
The alien ghosts
Among them.

Avoid
The official monuments;
They can’t help themselves
And lie.

Go inside
The courtyard of
The apartment building
At 62 Zlota Street.

The wall
You will see
Toward the back
Is what remains of the Wall

On Stawki Street find
a grey building
With a blue sign over its entrance
(“Nursing College” in Polish)

Look up at the windows.
These windows
Looked over
The Umschlagplatz.

Visit the cementary
On Okopowa Street;
Touch a few of the broken
Gravestones.

The stillness around you,
The dust on your fingers,
These could be
Your memorials.

Vocabulary by Wislawa Szymborska

“La Pologne? La Pologne? It’s really cold over there, isn’t it?”—she asked me with a sigh of relief. Because with so many countries these days, the safest thing to talk about is weather.
“Dear Lady,”—I want to reply—“Poets in my country write in gloves. I don’t claim they never take them off, especially if warmed up by the moon. In verses composed of loud cries, which alone can be heard over the din of windstorms, they sing of the simple life of shepherds of seals. Classical poets scratch pressed down snowdrifts with icicles of ink. The decadent rest of them spill tears over the fate of snowflakes. And if you want to drown, you need an ax to make an icehole. Oh lady, oh my dear lady…”
That’s what I want to reply. But I forgot how to say “seal” in French. Neither am I sure of “icicle” or “icehole”.
“La Pologne? La Pologne? It’s really cold over there, isn’t it?”
“Pas du tout”, I answer icily.

(translated by JotBe)

Fortuitous Poem by Isaiah Berlin

“….
Nature, and she alone, teaches philosophers what the true ends of men are.
True, nature at times speaks with too many voices.
She said to Spinoza that she was a logical system
But to Leibniz that she was a congeries of souls.
She said to Diderot that the world was a machine with cords, pulleys and springs,
Whereas to Herder she said that it was an organic living whole
To Montesquieu she talked about the infinite value of variety;
To Helvetius of unalterable uniformity.
To Rousseau she declared that she had been perverted by civilizations, sciences and the arts;
Whereas to d’Alembert she promised to reveal their secrets.
Concorcet and Paine perceived that she implants inalienable rights in man;
To Bentham she says this is mere “bawling upon paper”—‘nonsense upon stilts’.
To Berkeley she reveals herself as the language of God to man.
To Holbach she said that there was no God and Churches are conspiracies.
Pope, Shaftsbury, Rousseau see nature as a marvelous harmony.
Hegel sees her as a glorious field in which great armies clash by night.
Maistre sees her as an agony of blood, fear and self-immolation.

What is nature?....”