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When shadow falls

on my poem

I see light in it

faint stubborn

a life

tiny death

takes its first steps

matures quickly

grows

at night lies

on my heart

on my lips

like a sea chiseled

in black stone

you were screaming at night

dreadfully

frightfully

my wife says

it was death drilling corridors

within me a living being

death screaming within me

like a deserted cave

full of bones

When light falls

on my poem

I see death in it

a black grain

of ergot

in a golden head of wheat

which drifts off

beyond the horizon

September 1983

Chiaroscuro

Joanna Trzeciak, translation from
the Polish written by Tadeusz Rózewicz

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