Death
I got used to warm sheets,
to a woman, black coffee, and to vodka.
I fell in love with my snow, covered hut,
and hunger, satiety, and soft songs.
I wouldn’t be able to live without a cigarette
and I would die without a view of this clouded sky,
without a handkerchief
or flowers pleasing to my eye.
A cemetery at midnight horrifies me,
and the unfeeling table I write this poem on,
and your passionate, autumn eyes
through which death peers.
But when I lay my forehead against the wall,
it smells of your neck, lips, your hair,
and hay,
and water green with frogs and stars.
So I caress the table, windows, lampshade,
like your warm breasts in the dark ripened by night.
And when we nestle face to face,
I understand that there is no death.
— translated from the Polish by Aniela and Jerzy Gregorek