Justyna Bargielska

Yesterday I was walking across the desert,
already in the dark, and something
growled at me quietly. A sensation
not just any, of warmth, M.
...

So you've been nowhere? I have,
but not nowhere. It could've been Abkhazia,
the land of the first letters, where men
lay railways at night, upwind, and then
...

A girl disappears in the underpass
escaping a man who cries after her.
When my earthly life comes to an end, she thinks,
I'll go to Italy and while away my days
...

for Jurek

Do you know how you feel? Some discs
get recorded louder than other discs,
that's just how it is, but can you hear your voice?
I can't hear mine though I can hear yours.

Unless I'm at the bottom of an ocean. But not one of today's
just the one my son talks of sadly, pointing
to the school playground - once
all this was water, those stupid continents
divided it. Then he says, Mama
do you remember when we didn't need eyes?

Little man, how could I forget,
of the thousand adventures of my immortal soul
that was the best.
...

Honestly? I think you don't know what yearning is.
Has your daughter ever told you
fifty-three times in a row that the dog's eating your hat?
...

It must have been the day of Corpus Christi. An older woman
dragged a shapely girl with Down's behind her: little girl, my little girl
when I die, what will become of you? But I couldn't,
...

I really didn't want to die then.
I'd only just learnt to fold
my hands in prayer as though
I held something in them, only just
...

I'm annoyed by the windows in the house on the opposite shore
of the foaming street below. For hours on end I peek
into what's cooking at my neighbours', as they boil the tiny hearts
of sparrows - that's what dad called chitterlings when we were kids,
...

Fire-queen writes a letter: run, people, cars.
I think I know best what I find degrading.

If I killed our children and drove with them round town
...

If it's true, Chloris, that you love me
then forgive me but I have no idea what to do
about issues like world hunger
or the Pope not allowing Blacks to use
...

It's incredible what one burst pipe could do.
It's incredible what one man and one woman could do.
The doors close behind the waiter, but they close behind you
just like all doors closing.
...

I gave birth to an incredibly beautiful daughter, her teeth,
her hair as though from the Song of Songs. And I
felt beautiful myself, thank you. Whereas she -
that's a completely different beauty,
...

In the wonderment part of our program
a girl capable of the greatest cruelty,
of tarring a dog, of sleeping with three
...

That's him. That isn't. Can you see that woman?
I see her, too, but from within. You, Agfa, who loves scarlet,
look with me at that woman whom I see from within
...

Was the Big Bang only about sex? A generic
mistake, a tremor due to other tremors? Oh,
captain, you wouldn't like to swim in the scalding
...

On a long summer day lawnmowers can work from dusk to dawn.
You can wake and fall asleep to their whirr,
to the story you don't understand, but one day you'll have to
...

I'm asking, have they sent off that goddamn corpse,
or not. They write me that they have,
the delay might have been due to the weather
...