Goateed, balding,
gray-haired, in glasses ,
with coarsened, weary features,
with a wart on his cheek and a furrowed forehead,
as if clay had covered the angelic marble up-he wouldn't
know himself when it all happened.
The price, after all, for not having died already
goes up not in leaps but step by step, and he would
pay that price, too .
About his ear, just grazed by the bullet
when he ducked at the last minute, he would
say : "I was damn lucky."
While waiting to be served his noodle soup, he would
read a paper with the current date ,
giant headlines , tiny print of ads ,
or drum his fingers on the white tablecloth , and his hands would
have been used a long time now,
with their chapped skin and swollen veins .
Sometimes someone would
yell from the doorway: "Mr Baczynski,· phone call for you"–
and there'd be nothing strange about that
being him, about him standing up, straightening his sweater,
and slowly moving towards the door.
At this sight no one would
stop talking, no one would
freeze in mid-gesture , mid-breath
because this commonplace event would
be treated - such a pity-
as a commonplace event .
*Krzystof Kamil Baczynski . an enormously gifted poet of the "war generation ." was
killed as a member of the Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 at the age of
twenty-three .
