The Sworn Translator Poem by John a'Beckett

Dreams above the city's battered Soviet reality,
fifteen stories high, Mr Kuszmek, old survivor
at his humble oaken desk, the sworn translator
leans over my tattered Melbourne Arts degree
inspecting it for watermark, age, origin, validity
'This reminds me of my oath. I had to swear..'
his “ancient English” cuts through thickness, clear
'that every word..'- in sun-lit and Slavonic air -
“…I translate must be exact. A dream, that oath.
For though two languages may share a common tree,
Polish had, I do confess, a very different growth”

Sun happens into winter, wavering heat
beats on warm pipes, a tired drummer has us
both imagining an endless summer as

my eyes fall on the odd shapes on his wall:
paper things, strange maps: Pantopia, Resemblia,
all put together with a sworn translator's hands,
a saddle for a horse with wings, Symphonic Street,
a receding menu from the Happenstance Hotel,
a Moscow that wasn't, Warsaw that was meant to be.
'Too old to travel, I make journeys of the mind...
what's left of my imagination is a good, I find,
companion and an even better guide. I've been
to other people's places, ones they've looked forward to,
the wheres and whens of what they hoped they'd seen'

I nod agreement as I also find these icons do
share with old reality a sense of déjà vu.