III.
Two five-year-old boys before the poster of a
nightclub,
On which a buoyant girl adjusts her garter,
Say something to each other or just stare
At the saurian whiteness of the thigh.
Daimonion, remembering my childhood fears
On this earth of the adu lts, I grasped who you are.
In their night of distant shooting, fires on the horizon,
Coarse laughter, grapplings, harsh breathing,
The heart of a child is troubled. And you, a wanderer,
Your pity is so strong that you avert your face.
You are a friend of the innocent and the defenseless
Who long for the Kingdom, as was that young rich
man
So pure that he blushed hearing a lewd word,
And really suffered from it, and probably for that reason
After his short life, they raised him on the altars.*
*
St . Starlis/alls Kostka
Translated from the Polish by the author and Robert Hass
Retired
An old man, tapping with his cane, aware of his silence .
Which fills every corner of his body with a dense, burning lava.
And confirms the trustworthiness of the words ofJesus about a
worm that does not die and fire that never goes out.
Surrounded by his children and grandchildren, he sits down in a
wicker armchair on the porch of his house.
