Thoughts Through a Blue Crystal

Zuzanna Ginczanka

In days, omens and signs were sought – moments in the brain swelled with meaning –
– the shape of the clouds dreamed by chance at night could have seemed like a perusal at noon

and in the evening when the rain murmured on the rooftop –
– already the surprise could be felt somewhere –
(sleep could come along with its childish prayer found disarrayed in the morning)
– or used to head after two strangers
to listen to familiar – (remember?) – conversations –
(in the rain, in the grey weather and wintry evening flowers bloomed lilac with memory)
– in the bends of little streets with no names, would diminish – out of a vague feeling – breath.
– or there used to stand then on the road: –
someone who had a mouth with your smile! – –
- - - - - - - - - - -
They used to take hold of thoughts with their hands,
revitalize eyes with the chill of windowpanes
and convince the self – coldly, that you could be surrounded by walls
it has been forgotten: thoughts, like children, are too, too drunk
– and that they tread mute, circling the wall
– and that they look at you through the wall – –
- - - - - - - - - - -
Until they fell asleep because November came,
because the wind was staggering by the streetlamp: –
days changed on the roads like signs, made it tiresome to wander senselessly
– and peace will already be believed (sun overwhelmed with grey)
– so it was believed: there will already be peace –
– so it was believed: it will exist for a long time – –
- - - - - - - - - - -
When you swear truthfully, as if cutting the lie in half, like a knot, an entanglement,
you can learn from an undivinating conversation:
– on the day that passed without signs you came back!
(someone overturned on the desk by accident
the steel ink in a round blot: –
I will carve from two railroad tracks a serpentine ornament again in the distance.)
- - - - - - - - - - -
Tomorrow will have faded, like yesterday – the clouds pallid, like a canvas.
I will take a blue and shallow crystal in hand so that all’s less gray, sad –
I’ll peer at clouds through the window azure where gilded sculptures glitter;
the clouds do become a blue sky
in which the stars gild vastly.
– – as do Your eyes – –
(Probably You don’t know about it at all, have you even thought of it in a blink?
that you have eyes blue each day is grand to me, a miraculous event –)

6 November 1932

                          Translated from the Polish by Alex Braslavsky