Adam Zagajewski
Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh 
Once, when I was still a student, I gave my mother
a book about Brueghel (the father) for her name day
and after a week I took it back, claiming I would
need it for my "work" (she laughed at me).

These days though modernity invades
even cemeteries—not far from her grave
they've placed a candlemat, that's right, a candlemat,
a metal post, a machine dispensing candles,
you just toss two or three obols in the slot.

The name day for Ludwika came again, I went to that city,
not a city now but a tropical forest of memories
and my childhood spoke to me, every street
spoke, sang, maybe even shouted, yes,
shouted, talking about what had been and what
no longer was, and also about those I used to know.

I wasn't sure how to pray for the dead
in such tumult, in the shriek of recollection.
I placed a pot of small chrysanthemums on the gravestone
and understood only going home
that this had been a prayer, this momentary hesitation. 

Then I also realized I hadn't brought a pen
or pencil, I couldn't write down
what had happened, luckily I was saved
by the gas station cashier, she made me
a present of a used gold ballpoint pen
and an unused sheet of A4 paper.

I quickly started scribbling and while I scrawled
clumsy sentences my friends appeared out of nowhere,
Charlie Williams and also Tomaž Šalamun—
1 thought Tomaž would particularly like
the idea of the ballpoint at the gas station.

I truthfully explained: "but that's how it was, really,"
and I heard an answer: "really,
what does it mean really?" (they spoke together,
laughing, although I know their aesthetics
had radically differed in the past).

And nothing had changed, nothing had changed;
it was already dark when I got back to Kraków,
the last days of August, but still quite warm,
summer remembered its youth, even the night
was warm and elastic, nothing had changed,
armies of stalactites slowly grew in caves
and satellites stammered surveilling the earth,
and nothing had changed, nothing.
from the book TRUE LIFE / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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