Between spoonfuls of barszcz,
The poet explains the search
For cameras of the kind
Mazowiecki might choose
To enhance peace
In Europe
To the von Trapp Family.
Except not Austrian,
Not musical,
And worse off than Larkinesque.
Polish refugees who fled
Most evenings away. Dancing
Choreographed by fear.
The price:
Deeds deemed less than best
By the lost with high heads.
Local politics off the table. Mostly
The rights of the left-behind
What mattered at our best.
The righteousness of
belief
Beside itself,
Punctuated by screaming,
Sarcasm, death rattling,
seething, throwings out,
Abuse of pain.
Learned no doubt in some horrible
Reflex of pure anguish. All just
Children reciting lines
of war.
How’s that for an easy landing?
The poet spots tata.
The jeweler. The man
With the cash in his pocket.
Never less than a couple hundred.
You’d never know with what
He might be armed
At any given moment
Behind the charm.
In some superstar’s outfit,
People taking pictures
Of no one famous, Mama:
“You don’t understand what
You’re doing to me by going.
You are everything I’ve wasted for.”
But the barszcz is so good,
The bread,
The scent of sausages
The poet won’t eat,
Delicacies of sweets made
In concert with anyone who
Dares to compare.
“He thinks war is good for you.
There’s never nothing there.
Not worth dying for,
no way.”
The negatives growing in
Importance by repetition
in Polish,
“Not your war.”
But the poet understood
Their lesson. The social climbs
Committed in our name
For as little as the blood
Of some descendant of
Medieval sociopaths –
Ended with their war
Continuing through
The shifts in lines,
headstone stiff.
Cemetery-filling rows
of monuments
For the birds of hope
to tweet on.
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Paweł Grajnert is a writer, filmmaker and visual artist working in Poland and the US. His films have premiered at the Venice Film Festival, the Gdynia Film Festival and the Polish Film Festival in Los Angeles. Among others, he has won the Sloan prize for science-focused screenwriting at Columbia University, and a Literary Arts Award from the Illinois Arts Council. His film The Element of Surprise won best experimental film at the Kinomorphia Film Fest and was recently called “of the utmost relevance to the field of Experimental Fiction Film” by Pavel Prokopic of the University of Salford in Manchester. Founder of the Seattle Poetry Slam, his literary works and art are published and exhibited internationally.
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As a second-generation artist, Paul Herman’s practice began when he was old enough to hold a brush. He believes that, if one is careful to get the tone right, one can take liberties with the orthodox rules for colors. This unexpected use of color surprises the viewer, which introduces a liveliness that can make a common subject newly interesting. He is presently engaged in a doctoral thesis focused on Rembrandt and as a result feels like he is learning to paint all over again.
Another Chicago Magazine 