| Diwan Special issue|
Jacek
Bierezin
Born
in 1947 in Lodz (Poland), died in 1993 in Paris (France).
WHEN THE WIND COMES
(For
Mietek Grudzinski)
When
the wind comes everything will disappear: the Luxembourg gardens and the
Monceau park, the escalator of the cafι on the corner beneath the cloths,
the Chinese man in the Mandarin restaurant in Massy and the saved Vietnamese
pulled out of the sea that loved death instead of the red paradise of their
homeland. When the wind comes from the east everything will truly disappear:
the cathedral in Chartres and the vineyard of Burgundy, the dark-haired
fortune-teller from Saint Cloud who predicted a long journey for me, the
dentist from the Vaugirard Street, and every other thing that is ours. It
will not be the ten days that shook the world, it will be one brown-red
day, like the brown colour of not so distant times that have in our times
thoughts and feelings changed into the colour of blood on ties. And the
crossed hammer over the sickle only reminds of the crossed hooks of the
swastika. The touch of that wind must be felt on the face in the hart of
awakened consciousness. That red wind comes from the show-white poles of
the Kolima, from the white cards of books of the prophet Solzhenietzin.
It is harder and harder to talk about that day for all Trotskyists, anarchists,
pacifists whom that wind reminds only of the rose of winds.
So,
let us sit and have wine. Let us talk about the poems of Dylan Thomas, about
the novels of the moralist Raymond Chandler, about the poems of Galicz and
my friend Jacek. And let us perhaps try one more time in spite of everything
to give a testimony. Tell the truth. And one more time despite the conviction
that the world we live in is approaching the end of the world let us try
in our mountains, at our seas, in the pauses of our lives, between demonstrations,
sights of blood, camps and prisons in which our friends and our souls are
locked up, let us try with our wives, girlfriends, mistresses and spouses
what our grandmothers called happiness. Because happiness is short, and
long are the partings from which we can never escape into the absolute night
of oblivion.
Paris,
May 1984
TWO
LAST POEMS
The
two last poems were taken from me by the security service. Here I would
like to devote to them a minute of silence:
Thank
you.
Warszawa,
1978
Translated by Ulvija Tanoviζ
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