The Vanishing Poem by Jakobe Mansztajn

I start by stepping out onto the balcony. then say to myself:
at the end of this room there is a balcony. you can try to
exit, get some air, perhaps something more.
inhale, though maybe not. freeze like those bony
railings holding me back. you won't believe it,
but the mercury in gdansk is showing minus thirty.
winter has caught even those most warmly dressed,
even them, which sort of brings us closer together.

here in gdansk the deal is this: nothing is
where it ought to be, everything is elsewhere.
you're gone another month, another month
rolling over me like a tank. there was a war,
it's said all the escape routes were gunned down.
I was going to write you, say it's fine now. I walk a lot,
slowly coming to. still trying to catch up on sleep,
only that permanently dripping tap is a little loud.

it begins with a vanishing. I don't panic, telling myself:
things are still ongoing. breakfast, studies,
the future. that I can wait, seeing as nothing is
for certain. that I will wait, and when again you fail
to appear, I will go out onto the balcony, searching you
out somewhere between the station and the end credits,
making sure that which hurts, the pebble caught
between toes in a shoe, still feels like some rewardshing

Translated by Marek Kazmierski