Suicide Song
call me, we’ll talk
Wisława Szymborska
I belong to a generation which died long ago.
On the bottom of a dried out lake I find a wooden ship
and a sailor rotten through. See it from
above: a black branch in the centre of a brightening crater.
The finger with which you touch the sail connects me with the sky.
Hard feet, not knees, connect me to the earth.
What was once a drop in an ocean is now an ocean.
This generation died long ago or has not been born yet.
Either way, I belong to you, dust.
A man who has travelled far
“This has to be the work of a man
who has travelled far.”
Filip Zawada
I can now tell you that I have found myself,
here in this compartment with its light and its loaded passenger.
Is she asleep or dead, I do not know (the last tangible move is behind us).
I found myself here, alone and sober, strangely enough warm still.
If not dead, then alive, probably, animated yet
like a dot on the cornea slowly sinking beneath the lid,in the eye of the storm.
If civilisation does exist, I’ve just passed its last bastion.
Perhaps I had once been a part of that world.
Now, I belong to thieves, bribe ticket inspectors, pose
in front of frosted glass, reflected in the searchlights of a power station,
in the blurred signs which pronounce passing each village.
Leaning carelessly out of the window
I feel that I am closer,within reach.
Because it was a man who had travelled far,
he had to compose a song, before he filled his mouth
with air, earth and water.
He stood right here.
It’s his writing
you are trying to decipher.
