Krystyna Dąbrowska

I cannot say we, not unless we
is a hyphen between me and you,
that carries across a spark, though sometimes
it’s like a tug of war.
I cannot write we, not unless we
is a bracket for the two of us, the room in which
we sleep,
from which we are trying to drive out a hornet.
Not unless we is all four of our eyes:
they watch as the hornet scratches in the lampshade,
it’s brown with stripes of gold, see that – what a
beauty.
I cannot write myself into a we greater
than buzzing, wing-inscribed circles
orbiting you and me, that intersect each other
and grow away from us, moving ever further.

I am a travel agency for the dead,
I book them flights to the dreams of the living.
Famous celebrities apply to me, like Heraclitus,
to be able to visit a writer who’s in love with him,
but so do the lesser-known dead – like a farmer
from Wasiły village,
wishing to advise his wife on matters of rabbit
breeding.
Sometimes several generations of a family charter
an airplane
and land on the brow of their final descendant.
I also have dealings with the murdered,
who on regular trips to the dreams of the survivors,
collect up points in a frequent flyer program.
I never deny my services to anyone.
I find them the very best connections
and I reproach myself when a young lover,
to get into his girlfriend’s dream,
must make a transfer in the dream of a snoring crone.
Or when weather conditions force an emergency
landing

and the dead man calls me: do something,
I’m stuck in the dream of a terrified child!
Incidents like these mean stress and a challenge
for me, a minor business with major ambitions –
for though I have no access either to the dead men’s
world
or to other people dreams,
thanks to me they come into contact. 

Summer, season of watermelons.
And your story about them:
childhood, a nursing home
for the incurably sick,
the white cornettes of the Sisters of Charity
sailing along in the garden.
Your grandpa, who ran the home,
grew watermelons in cold frames.
The sisters would come there
to lay claim to the fruits
– as yet under-ripe
on their umbilical stems –
and in careful even letters,
on the melon of her choice,
each would write her name.
Here they had something of their own,
which they jealously guarded.
The watermelons grew, and with them
on the green stripy skins
so did the names, ever bigger.
As if they had broken free

of the nursing nuns,
who wore them modestly like their habits,
and were living a second life
as succulent fruits,
jostling for space among the leaves.
Sometimes the watermelons burst.
A crack ran through the name.
And there inside appeared
the ruby-colored flesh.