TE22 Potpourri

Invisible (poetry) Jacek Gutorow Translated from Polish by Piotr Florczyk

Reading Homer

for Stanisław Vincenz

One more stilt, one more verse propping up the rest. The sky is tart, full of unextinguished snow. Beyond that hill some threadbare afternoon redness, nothing else. Words beckon and signal an empty road; we depart from a respectable German village for the city of memories, traversing undeveloped vignettes of the past.

How is it, Odysseus? You only had to reach Ithaca. No sentimental excursions, sentences arranged in rhythmic epochs, wonderful images strewn like poppy seeds from an open hand. You were to return and settle down. And now you drop in at the gardens as into fleeting digressions, seducing girls and birds, walking steadily through an ineffable whole. 29

Jacek Gutorow