AMERICANS IN KRAKOW

 

 

It is the second time already that I participate as an observer at the Meeting of Poets in Krakow organised by Adam Zagajewski and Edward Hirsch. I listen to the lectures and discussions held in the magical Collegium Maius, and attend the solemn (and not so solemn) poetry readings at the Bernardine Church, the Tempel Synagogue and the Klub Re.

My last year’s “Polish-American reflections” were expressed in the poems Poezja w Synagodze Tempel (“Poetry in the Tempel Synagogue”), Internet PRACOWNIA no. 32, and Dar (“Gift”), TOPOS 1–3, 2003. This year, I once again enter the world where American, Irish, Jewish, Lithuanian and Polish cultures meet     and marvel at one another in amazement.

 

The following are the participants of the Krakow Meeting of Poets, 9 – 16.07.2003:

Czesław Miłosz, Seamus Heaney, W.S.Merwin, Tomas Venclova, Adam Zagajewski, Julia Hartwig, Edward Hirsch, Eavan Boland, Linda Gregorson, Marzanna Kielar, Artur Szlosarek, Paweł Marcinkiewicz, Clare Cavanagh, Sarah Rothenberg, Paweł Kłoczowski, Aleksander Fiut, Brian Barker, Nicky Beer, Aaron Crippen, Landon Godfrey, Jennifer Grotz, Gary Hawkins, Jason Koo, Andrew Kozma, Alissa Leigh, Miho Nonaka, Todd Samuelson, Jacquelyn Shah, David Ray Vance, Sasha West.

 

 

 

 

CON  REPULSIONE[1]

 

 

Dawn, 13.07.2003

 

It depends on whether you get out of the bed on the wrong side, they say. It depends on what your eyes want to see, I say to myself. Are you able to look through those four windows and think aloud: “What a beautiful sight, those images of trees”. These were the words of Basia W. when she visited me in Krakow for the first time. She did not look down into the abyss of run-down, grimy art-nouveau buildings whose floors were suspended in the entropy of neglect. She did not see the leafless stump of a chimney towering above the century-old trees lining the Grzegórzecka street. And now I am looking out like she did, not down where the greyness is zigzagged by black graffiti reminiscent of psychedelic gothic print. I am not gazing at nor listening to the monotony of the street below as if it were a lower deck of a ship, say deck T, like time, or W, like water. The water in the trough of the street’s time flows rapidly, impetuously, washes away the noises as if they were pebbles in a river, carries them for a while and discards them later somewhere on the threshold of sound. I close the windows tightly (why had I not ordered triple glazing?) and stare at Basia’s images of trees in windows which resemble potted flowers on external sills like surreal Grzegórzecka Terraces.

 

My loneliness in Krakow is over-realistic in comparison with the exhibition of loneliness of Auschwitz which American poets from University of Houston will be touching today with their eyes, not without repulsion[2].

Loneliness in Krakow in 2003 is just as much a euphemism as loneliness in Auschwitz in 1943, and both oscillate between two extremes: civilisational discomfort and civilised hell.

A powerful word uttered for the second time is like a gift of a second red rose. It softens the scream of its original impression.

How loudly do the Two Suitcases of Children’s Drawings from Terezin (1942-44) creak?[3] How forcefully does the image of a besieging crowd of children’s hands lash at the face? And how methodical, and seemingly unreflective, is the still life created by those very same hands?

 

A tin plate, a yellow star, a candlestick, a sad elephant, a ballerina with her eyes closed, an angel with braids, the moon with bandaged head, blood on the score, eyes like two yarmulkas, a guard with a stick, a stick with a heart, an alsation in a cage painted over, the undrawn face of God, a self-portrait like an opened window, illuminated hands, paper dolls in a bonfire, a blue horse over a sloping roof, a wavy line, a thick diagonal line, and a second line to match[4].

 

How loudly does Gideon Klein, the odd-numbered inmate in the corner of an even-numbered Terezin barrack (or the other way round), play his sonata on a phantom grand piano? Allegro con fuoco.[5] Exactly 60 years after he composed this work the fingers of Sarah Rothenberg in the Krakow Florianka hall are saying “the sun (...) was too frightened to rise”.[6] Then Gideon fades away, disappears in the darkness of Adagio as if in a cellar without windows, plays with underground demons. Allegro vivace.[7] It is only possible to die such a death when you are 25. Vivace.

 

 

Dusk, 13.07.2003

 

How beautiful is this sound, this distant dissonance – an image of darkness.

 

 

 

                                                                                                                 Krystyna Lenkowska