BROWSE Columns
✕
From the Polish of Tadeusz Borowski
If you are living, then remember
that I still am. But do not come
to me. In this black swollen night
snowflakes stick to the panes like gum.
Wind wheezes. Naked tree-shapes smack
the windows. Over me like smoke
from blown-out towns and battle fronts
the boundless deaf blunt darkness floats.
Horridly quiet. Why've I lived
so long? Now, only bitter pain.
Do not come back. My love all went
up in the crematorium flame.
There you were mine. Your body, covered
in abscesses and scabies, rose
up like a cloud. There you were mine,
from heaven, from fire. Burned out. Case closed.
You will not come back to me. Neither
will the fog-drunken wind return.
The dead won't rise from common graves,
the brittle ash cannot unburn.
Don't. Don't come back. It was all play,
theatrics, figments of the mind!
Your love is circling over me
like human smoke above the wind.
A. Z. Foreman is a linguist, poet, short story author and/or translator pursuing a doctorate at the Ohio State University. His work has been featured in the Threepenny Review, Rattle, ANMLY, Poet Lore and elsewhere including two people's tattoos but not yet the Starfleet Academy Quarterly or Tattooine Monthly. He writes from the edge of thought between sleep and waking. He wants to pet your dog. He is grateful to Merjem Hodzic for her proofreading of his Bosnian passages for this piece.
