^{translated from the Polish by Alissa Valles}

1
I cannot find the title
for a memory of you
with a hand torn from the dark
I move on the remains of faces

faint profiles of friends
froze into hard outlines

            revolving around my head
            empty as the wind’s forehead— 
            the silhouette of a black paper man

2
living—despite 
living—against
I reproach myself with the sin of forgetting

you left an embrace like a needless sweater
a gaze like a question

our hands won’t pass on the shape of your hands
we let them go to waste touching common things

our eyes reflect a question
tranquil as mirrored glass
unclouded by warm breath

every day I refresh my eye 
every day my touch grows
tickled by the nearness of so many things

life purls like blood
Shadows softly melt
let’s not let the fallen perish—

a cloud will pass on their memory—
the worn profiles of Roman coins

3
the women in our street
were ordinary and good
patiently they fetched from market 
nourishing bouquets of vegetables

the children in our street
—such a torment to cats

the pigeons—a mild gray

in the park there was a statue of the Poet
children rolled their hoops
and their colorful cries
birds sat on his hands
reading his silence

in the summer nights wives 
patiently waited for mouths
smelling of familiar tobacco

            women couldn’t answer
            their kids: he’ll be back
            when the city went down
            they put out fires hands
            pressed up to their eyes

            the children from our street
            met with a very hard death

            pigeons fell lightly 
            like air shot down

            now the lips of the Poet 
            are a flattened horizon
            birds children and wives cannot dwell
            in the city’s pitiful shell
            in the cool down of ash

            the city which stands on water
            smooth as a mirror’s memory
            is reflected from the river-bed

            and flies to a lofty star 
            where the fire smells far
            as a page from the Iliad