Justyna Bargielska

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

condoms, the screen shutting down

and by shutting down revealing it’s no door.

About photographers who kill themselves

over photographs they’ve taken.

Though the light was amazing, they kill themselves.

If it’s true, Chloris, that you love me

then I don’t even know what to do with this sea

which by parting swallows unruly dogs,

unplanned children, ships and their captains,

cities, countries, worlds.  I swim in this sea

as long as I swim towards you, Chloris.  If

you love me tell me what to do

once I realise I’m swimming but I no longer love you.

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

I’d find that degrading. If I did what I do

to get by as a fashion statement I’d find that

degrading. The correct equation never threatens love.

The correct equation in which faith

can be substituted without any loss for longing – a language

in which I could have been so painlessly saved

which you were supposed to invent for me, but didn’t –

I’d find that degrading.

I’m not enclosing hugs, I don’t send kisses, I wage

war on all fronts. Write back to me asap.

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,

that's beauty I want to protect.

If I had some sort of beauty I'd blush,

anyhow I probably do have some, guys

wouldn't chase after me as much if I didn't,

but I don't like my beauty, because guys

chase after it. My daughter's beauty, so I believe,

is the only hope

for this world.

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

and that I should drop them a line next Wednesday

whether I was going to complain or if I wanted another corpse instead.

I don’t really know, I have time till Wednesday

to think this over. A worm betrayed another worm

and now it writhes, both in dreams, and everywhere.

Whereas in the light from the school’s library windows

it seems that my child’s turned into stone

and it says: don’t cry, woman, if I’m not crying.

Come on, close up, nothin’ to see here, nothin’ to see.

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,

in other words when cats vanished and returned

with the next phase of the moon, ears torn.  Not to me

anymore now – the windows on the ground floor

what a bordello, fliers of women in the letterbox, as grown up as I

could never be, even if I went on my knees

over broken glass from kitchen to bedroom.

Upstairs a man with a dog's muzzle, or maybe

a dog with a human face, I never know, lowers down

a glass eye on his fishing rod and peeps at the women below.

I'm annoyed by their windows. They've gone over the top

with this life, as though they didn't know, you don't need to at all.

So you've been nowhere? I have,

but not nowhere. It could've been Abkhazia,

the land of first letters, where men

lay railways at night, upwind, and then

they're surprised. In map cases they keep a photo of that

pink with blue pin-up girl,

other sacred pictures they set against the walls.

They throw stones at pigeons, angry

that a pigeon swings and soars, and then gets

over it as if nothing happened, not worried

that it won't like itself any more.

They're set shallowly in skin, then more deeply

in canvas and in the end that pin-up

shows up anyway, flicks off and there's no trace.

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’ve grieved with the bees over our parting

now I will try to enjoy what occurs before it

right up to the moment when I no longer know

what to do with the time I have left

and so I go to sleep and someone stands over me saying:

snakes sleep like this, curled in a ball like kittens or small children,

see, for this is the position in which you’re taken to heaven.

In the wonderment part of our program

a girl capable of the greatest cruelty,

of tarring a dog, of sleeping with three

boys at the same time, including one in her head,

is burning in hell.

When you’re pressing the button, please, remember

that no one has ever loved you as much as I have

and no one wanted to be free in your presence as much

as I did. I simply had

my limitations.

The Church persists that corpses be buried

explaining that Christ himself wanted to be

buried. Sure, I was going to

be resurrected, and not be reborn

from ashes like a phoenix, says Christ,

but it doesn’t mean that others can’t

be reborn from ashes like a phoenix,

says Christ and He’s really

pissed off at this stupid Church.

Like a phoenix. In four hours

I’ll see you, whatever

happens, I’ll see you

in three hours.

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.

The fear like from an old book: she’s afraid that she can become a panther

and she’s not turned on by it at all, because what does a panther do? Can a panther

not close her mouth for a picture, can she go to bed in her new shoes?

When a panther looks at bread, it goes stale, that’s her gift.

A milleress also has a cool gift, to reanimate meat.

But she’d like to have one thing from a panther: when someone comes and says

a train that exists only on schedule has just left, she'd like to be able

to say oh, has it? and not try to eat the sun to stop it from setting.

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?

Let it, I said. I don't know if it was even once. Your emails

aren't emails, they're caresses. Tonight I'll go to sleep with you,

the email says to me. No, email, tonight you'll go to sleep with your wife,

and I'll go to sleep with my husband. Nevertheless no later than tomorrow

I plan to rid the world of all vessels,

those for drinking, peeing in, storing loved ones' ashes,

for collecting our Saviour's blood, and I will be the last

vessel in the world. And, let's be clear,

our Saviour's blood and I, only we two know

what yearning is.

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,

older woman, promise you that we won't eat her, I don't exactly know

the habits of my kind, not exactly enough.

I often see us stopping on street corners,

we take out pictures from our wallets of buildings covered with golden domes

to show each other, men and women,

young and old, but whether from longing or as threats, I don't know.

It must have been that day, along the tracks

or at the edge of the park that a man in a brown jacket was walking,

he carried a football table, tiny heads upside down

and there's nothing I can do about it, but the sun was tilting to the west.

On a long summer day lawnmowers can work from dusk to dawn.

You can wake up and fall asleep to their whirr,

to the story you don’t understand, but one day you'll have to

face that phenomenon. And then, farewell, marvelous world,

where anise candy is lascivious simply due to its content

of the letter s.

Since then, you’ve carried your ration yourself, without taking turns, for with whom.

You see butterflies or rainbows appearing out of the blue

for what they really are – harbingers of a sudden death,

yours or your kind's for many generations on all possible sides.

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

basin of this poem, and having entered

its harbor, you wouldn’t go to bed with any

girl lurking for you in its slimy

alleys. Let the choir confirm

the energetic audit: here a clock

has no hands. A snake has a hand

instead of a head, but it curls up into a ball.

Girls of fatal proportions

throw these balls from heights into the night.

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

squabbling with neighbours across the balcony, until then

I need to think small, I need to think: Alexandria,

a light seeped through lemon essence.

I said it once aloud on the bus.

Do they have caskets there big enough to fit

a bus and the rest of Greek lacrimosa jars? And the hawthorn

smelled beautiful. How finely do you have to crush me

to get the dye you're after?

                                              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.

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

learnt to negotiate.

With charm. Even standing waist deep

in a sea of flames. I learnt to negotiate

everything, describing it with adjectives

which sound good translated into English.

I folded my hands in prayer

as though I was hiding something more than stone

and I liked this trick.

This image looked like a triptich

but it wouldn't close.

I thought it was a bunch of chrysanthemums

but it was a child's head.

I thought it was a garden parasol

but it was the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.

If I'd prayed the way you're supposed to,

with my hands in the air, I'd still be alive.

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

while I slowly get used to the thought that there aren’t many women

like that and with another thought, quite similar, that there are millions of women like that.

Look at me, Agfa, while I can still turn around

without having to be better than the previous me, because it’s always

me, because he wouldn’t touch anyone who weren't me,

in this, past and future life. Actually, I think

that I gave birth to him, Agfa, I actually think that I could have.