It is these pines, this sand, this old tree stump that millions of human eyes saw as their freight wagons came slowly up to the platform…We enter the camp. We tread the earth of Treblinka. The lupine pods split open at the least touch; they split with a faint ping…The sounds of the falling peas and the bursting pods come together to form a single soft, sad melody. It is as if a funeral knell—a barely audible, sad, broad, peaceful tolling—is being carried to us from the very depths of the earth…Here they are: the half-rotted shirts of those who were murdered, their shoes, little cogwheels from watches, penknives, candlesticks, a child’s shoes with red pompoms, an embroidered towel from Ukraine, lace underwear, pots, jars, children’s plastic mugs, letters penciled in a childish scrawl, small volumes of poetry…
We walk on over the swaying, bottomless earth of Treblinka and suddenly come to a stop. Thick wavy hair, gleaming like burnished copper, the delicate lovely hair of a young woman, trampled into the ground; and beside it, some equally fine blond hair; and then some heavy black plaits on the bright sand; and then more and more…
And the lupine pods keep popping open, and the tiny peas keep pattering down—and this really does all sound like a funeral knell rung by countless little bells from under the earth.
And it feels as if your heart must come to a stop now, gripped by more sorrow, more grief, more anguish than any human being can endure…
Vasily Grossman, The Sistine Madonna, 1955
In the center of Warsaw, on Grzybowski Square, there is a building at the address Próżna 14 where the Holocaust was being discussed.
The building is derelict, from another time, and where shop entrances once were, there is now graffiti. Beside one of the entrances, written on the wall is “ONR,” which means “Obóz Narodowo-Radikalny,” the name of the current form of the far-right movement in Poland. There were attempts to write over the letters, but it was still visible. Beneath it was the word “Pamiętasz?” “Do you remember?”
On the other side of the doors were two painted images. One was an image of Jesus, with the word “prawdą” “truth” written under it. To the left of the image was a map of the ghetto, the location of Próżna 14 and Grzybowski Square at the bottom. The words beneath it in Hebrew read, “The ghetto was here.”
Underneath the painted Jesus and the word “truth,” was written the word, “boli,” “hurts.”
“The truth hurts.”
November, 2018
I read verses about Poland
written by foreign poets. Germans and Russians
have not only rifles, but also
ink, pens, a little heart and a lot
of imagination. Poland—in their verses—
resembles a reckless unicorn
feeding on the wool of tapestries,
it is beautiful, weak and imprudent.
I do not comprehend the working
of the mechanism of illusion
but even I, a sober reader,
am enchanted by that legendary, defenseless country
on which feed black eagles, hungry emperors,
the Third Reich and the Third Rome.
Adam Zagajewski, April 14, 1982
* * *
The twenty-four hours cross the middle, silence grows louder,
Having flown past ears, your words in the dark resound,
And the air smells of wormwood—dry, fake, and bitter,
Since the moon is like coal, and nature is weightless matter.
You awoke long ago. Between yourself and the shores
Of sleep, two planes stretch, merged by a hazy border,
And, at the end of the world, by the farthest height,
The speech of dead leaves, the speech of age old night.
Will you grasp what the mouth, once silent, whispers aloud?
In the midst of the void, between the black and white clouds,
Above the swampy fields, the light clears the weather
With water reflections, the voice of invisible feathers.
Don’t hurry to visit the farm. Like a menace, there lurks
A spring congealed, concealed in the shade of the oaks.
And the owner is absent, and, when the key is inserted,
The days, uninhabited, move in a squeaking circle.
Will you wander further? Beyond the vanishing steam
Of morning, your time coincides with the ceaseless stream,
And there is no memory able to scoop out the depth,
And childhood is easy, and youth completely bereft
Of meaning. Our souls are nearby, our felling was recent,
The clock of noon is ticking somewhere in the present,
And an arrow halts in the air, having strayed from its line,
Since the world is the same, while solitude changes each time.
Like the hour of death, they await us:the homeward train,
The white postwar dust, the trunk of a half-withered pine,
The fortress’ empty ditches, the beacon in ruins,
And, behind the cracked walls, and open to all, the rooms.
The coolness flows to the coast, the wind takes the leaves,
The light of September grows stronger over the graves,
And, alongside the coast, in the shallow drift, the black
Ships glitter, rich, replete with space and the past.
That’s a row of years, of old ages, alien and strange,
Thus, across the hills, the grass becomes one with rain,
Thus the dictionary’s thicket splices the objects’ fates,
And voices, once lost, return from the world to their place
Inside us. Glance back without fear; I can also feel
How the ponderous breathing burdens our shoulders and heels.
This is just black soil, clay, moisture, oblivion, a well,
The outskirts of others’ nonbeing, of others’ bells.
You halt amidst driftwood, glass, Cyrillic letters,
In the dead rick streak of the falling tide, together
With companions who left long before their lives had unfolded.
And you, like a shadow, are hidden by heat and enfolded.
And you, disappearing in time, become aware
Of the onset of fall, of the changes in water and air,
And, larger than its own life, a desolate soul,
Like a scene in the retina, breaks in the depth of the whole.
Tomas Venclova, Winter Dialogue, 1997
“Your days will pass, one by one,
words in a breathless sentence strung
together without punctuation, your actions,
those thoughts that come as such a cost,
won't follow you, but if they do
it will be as perpetually vain regrets, little
will it matter, very little, whether you
betray or remain faithful, because each will
come to you in turn, everything will
be lost as if you'd been dreaming, it's like
a dream, the disorder of an old man's life
that comes back at the end, you'll descend
into lower depths you don't suspect are there,
you'll be seized, at times, by an unfathomable joy
before the expanse that evening will open up
where the streets run out; impassive, the world
will continue on its course, flowers
that will fade in autumn will come, snow
that will melt like snow in the sun, each day
will bring with it the History you'll throw out
with the newspaper, with your boredom, you'll
have friendships that you'll lose, love you'll see
falling away from you, that you'll try
in vain to hold on to, everything will be
given to you, everything taken away,
everything will come, everything pass away
like this night I've pulled you from, now go.”
Robert Melançon, Montréal Before Spring, 2015
Nie malować zwierząt
Nie malować ludzi
Nie malować martwych natur
Nie malować pejzaży
Nie malować struktur
Nie malować dekoracji
Nie malować zdarzeń z prywatnego życia ludzi
Nie malować wydarzeń politycznych
Nie malować scen historycznych
Nie malować ptaków i ryb
Nie malować uczuć
Nie malować architektury
Nie malować abstrakcji
Nie malować marzeń
Nie malować niewiedzy
Nie malować wiedzy
Nie malować nicości
Nie malować fantazji
Nie malować plam ani linii
Nie malować zjawisk atmosferycznych
Nie malować seksu
Nie malować narodzin
Nie malować śmierci
Nie malować pragnień
Nie malować strachu
Ryszard Grzyb, 2004
