Poland

"La Pologne? La Pologne? Miserably cold there,

isn't it?"

                I bristled but she breathed easier.

Political climates such as they were,

she felt relieved to trade banalities.

"Oh yes," I'd like to have answered her,

"the poets of my country write in gloves.

I can't swear they wouldn't take them off

if priestly moonlight warmed their delicate hands,

but they take care. In their milk-toothed stanzas

the chaotic footfalls of dockworkers scan.

They can translate the worst howling blizzards

into meek songs praising the virtues of sealskin.

Our classics scrawl in drifts with icicles.

The rest, queer decadents, whine after snowflakes.

A drowning man has to bring his own axe

to cut a wake in the ice. That's how it is, madame."

That's how I'd like to have answered her.

But I'd forgotten how to say seal in French,

icicle was never in my vocabulary,

and wake was too foreign a word to explain.

"La Pologne? La Pologne? Miserably cold there,

isn't it?"

                "Pas du tout," I replied icily.

                                        D'apres Dedecius/Szymborska

                                        for Florian Smeija