If I had not learned to write, stupid me, I’d be happy.
— Papusza’s confession
It’s not the forest anymore
but too far to the world
She closed the pine’s creaking door
She’s not home
I was lithe
as a forest squirrel
even though I was
black
Now she is fainting
in every direction against the wind
A dry branch above her
All of her poverty
was the property
she lavishly stole
Everything from someone else’s hen house
but the song
For that she stole letters
torn from newspapers posters signboards
she strung such beads of words
for no one
In dreams she had her own pine trees
They uprooted them
She stumbles over the holes
They unraveled her colors
not for darning
not for charming
and no shawl will come from it
The elements closed in on themselves
water drowned in water
fire burned in fire
the earth was buried in earth
Her song ran off beyond the forest
echoing
They will go slit its throat
Blackbearded they go
with a knife in the bootleg
with an aiming eye
with a curse hissing in their pipe
The whole gypsy forest
of nocturnal horse stealers
set out to meet her
tiny as a goldfinch
the shadows of ancestors
ran through the crunch of brushwood
The pine forest
has only needles for her
The crackling gold cones
have settled into ash
Her little brothers
forest bird-brothers
went silent to deny her
The moon flew above
to give her away
She was lithe
as a forest squirrel
even though she was
black
She ran away from herself
and won’t be back
She closed the pine’s creaking door
She isn’t anywhere
She wanted to bury
her song alive
to throw the letters into an anthill
Now the ants carry them along a blade of grass
A bird stutters
her last note
It’s not the forest anymore
but too far to the world
So she goes low to the ground
the black squirrel from above
not to anywhere
nowhere
no one’s
Jennifer Grotz’s most recent book of poems is Window Left Open (Graywolf Press). She is the director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences.
Piotr Sommer is the author of Continued (Wesleyan University Press) and Overdoing It (Hobart and William Smith Colleges Press). His collected poems, Po Ciemku Też, (Also In The Dark) appeared in Poland in 2013.
Jerzy Ficowski (1924-2006) was a poet, songwriter, and scholar on the Polish Roma population as well as the writer-artist Bruno Schulz. Recent translations of Ficowski’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Nation, New York Review of Books, and Ploughshares.