- Saint Sabina of Brzeg, Kolomyia, Sniatyn, Łapy, Tobolsk,
whose ID said your place of birth was Sniatyn in USSR,
even though when you were born there was no USSR
and the ruler was Tsar Nicholas, a saint by definition.
- You, who led us all, before we even took place, hidden
in the twists of the steppe genotype, out of your home
towards your captivity in June 1941, with one hour left
to pack everything.
- In your person our history is stitched together with a tack of rail tracks,
in a steady rat-tat of the wheels of cattle carriages as far as Orsha,
to the bridge over the Dnieper River, where they stopped, abandoned
by the guards. And suddenly Stukas dropped bombs from the sky,
and carriages were full of people, and the carriages’ doors were sealed.
- With your sons and your daughter, together with the others, you prayed,
God, save us from sudden and unexpected death. For instance, delivered
by a well-aimed bomb that breaks the back of the bridge and knocks off
the carriages into the abyss of the Dnieper, which didn’t have to
be very deep to swallow you.
- You, who only had one hour to decide which things would come in handy
for the rest of your life. And before you left home, from among many objects
you chose a key which would not match any lock. But your heart
kept telling you that if you never come back to the old home, the old key
would open the door to the new home.
- I try to imagine what this key looked like, how it fit into your hand.
It might be why even today I can’t stand piles of keys in huge boxes
at flea markets and why the people selling them might as well
be putting human beings for sale.
- Sabina, your husband Franciszek disappeared in spring 1940
and nobody ever heard anything about him again, apart from
a Jew who saw the Russkies taking the police chief from his post.
- And he ran to the settlement of wooden cabins on the outskirts
of the town of Łapy, with Franciszek’s note in his hand. Tragedy struck,
Mrs Szopf, your husband was taken away, by the Russkies, and he threw
this note out the window and I brought it to you.
- And apart from his mysterious fellow deportee, the sender of the 1946 letter,
already addressed to the Cicha Street, in the formerly German town of Brieg.
There was a drawing in this letter, child-like, of a grave, with flowers on it,
and above the flowers a board saying that this was a resting place
of Franciszek Szopf.
- As if it was the one and only Polish grave on all the deserts of the Soviet Russia.
As if there were no other graves between the Lena and the Irtysh, between
the White Sea and Kazakhstan, no other graves covered with moss and stones,
and forest turf, with a Polish name on the cross.
- As if everybody from the Ural to Kamchatka only knew this one
and only Polish grave. And knew which winding road to take to find it.
- Sabina, you were always faithful to hope and full of trust,
and all your trust was placed in God, and to everything unknown
you used to say, “Ah, whatever’s God’s will, so may it be,” which today
might be easily mistaken for naivety.
- And you believed in hope, which told you to stand in the snow in winter
by a prison, you, your sons and your daughter; which told you to take
prisoners home, to feed and water them before sending them on their way,
just in case somebody let out on amnesty might know what had happened to Franek.
- And you remained faithful to this hope, which was revived in spring and summer
of 1946 with the Red Cross postcards and a letter from the fellow deportee,
and it demanded financial aid in small amounts for each letter containing new
details about the life and death of Franciszek Szopf,
- the former police chief from Łapy, the former printer, the former clerk
from the Military Draft Office of the Polish Army, and before that Border Protection Corps
at Mokra Street in Kolomyia, who could have well been a good soldier Švejk,
if not for the fact that there are times and places when good soldiers
are shot at the back of their heads.
- Until one of your sons went to the town where the cards were sent from
and saw that the hope was in fact a drunken cobbler living from hand to mouth
in a small town of Solice-Zdrój near Wałbrzych, and that he didn’t even know
where he got the address of Franciszek Szopf’s widow.
- The drunken cobbler only knew he wanted a drink and that thing inside him
wanted a drink too, and that thing had no scruples or heart, but you did,
so it must have got broken, even though nobody could see it.
- Sabina, you knew that any police force of this world could knock on your door
at any time, and take the food away, and there is nothing worse than hunger
which cannot be satiated.
- You often said that a human being, when he is really hungry, will eat
even shit with gusto. And that you always have to have something stashed away
for a rainy day.
- Which is why many years after the war you invented mysterious
hiding places for meatballs, vegetable salads, potatoes, boiled and raw,
sugar, slices of various meats. We couldn’t find those hiding places
for months, even when we followed the stench.
- And you did it all the time, even when there was no war anymore.
and when there was peace, when Your God strangled one satan
with the hands of another, which I don’t think you ever said,
but it sounds like your words, so let it be so.
- The fight for the peace went on for so long and then it suddenly stopped,
and there were no more red army barracks outside the window, just regular barracks,
and it was the time when you were fading, getting ready for the Himmelkommando.
- And you told us again and again to unstitch the collar from your coffin dress
and you told us to think warmly of you and to have some vodka to toast you
at the funeral and then you sang, because it made you think of it, “Don’t be so blue,
knock back a few.”
- You who soaked your feet in the Prut in our name before it all took place
and said that you wanted to soak your feet in this river one more time before
you die. As if the Prut was the Jordan, the Ganges or the Brahmaputra.
- And many years after your death, your eldest granddaughter spilled the water
from the Prut in the spot where your legs had probably been.
- You who, while working in the kitchen, used to sing the song “My Master”
addressing Jesus Christ, but who died without viaticum and the last rites,
because you wanted to drink vodka with the young priest, his reverence.
- And it was the time when you were bed-ridden and the bed turned into
a lift taking you, lighter and lighter, to the Himmelkommando, and then
the priest arrived with a trembling sacrament in his steady, dogmatic hands.
- All you wanted was to be remembered warmly and to be toasted with vodka
at your funeral. The young priest didn’t get it, because he was young
and he was a priest, and he was jabbering something about confessing sins.
- But you didn’t hear his words, you only saw that a priest in the house is God in the house
bring us some vodka, his reverence and I, we will be drinking. And he fled and said
on the doorstep that he would never come back here again, which we observed
to the letter, we never let him in on a pastoral visit.
- In your last moments all you had left was Jesus without the Host, and quite possibly
he took you in not asking any unnecessary questions at the Himmelkommando
and he had some vodka with you, you who were buried not just without sacraments,
but also almost without a death certificate.
- For on the last night you felt like some vodka and your granddaughter gave you a glass
of mead. We couldn’t give you vodka because after two years of readying for the Himmelkommando you were as transparent as a wafer.
- And you said that you would not drink on your own like some carter,
so the granddaughter poured some for herself, but you said that
it’s not on for women to drink on their own, what, no man in the house,
so the granddaughter sent for the great-grandson, even though
it was the middle of the night, work and school in the morning.
- And you drank together – two women and one man – three glasses,
and then you fell asleep, mumbling the first syllable of your granddaughter’s name,
like a mantra, “Mo-mo-mo-mo”.
- And in the early hours you were cold and the ambulance had to be called
in to confirm your death.
- The doctor was as sensitive as a breathalyser and she sensed
an opportunity for a backhander and threatened with an autopsy if we didn’t pay.
And we just wanted to have a drink with you and we knew not what we did,
- and so we paid.
- Sabina, you who were like an ecumenical letter to the seven churches;
you who sang Polish religious songs while rolling out pasta dough
with a German bottle made of thick glass; you who swore in Ukrainian
and bid in Yiddish when playing Elevens with your sister Hania or when
you wanted to get her advice without other people understanding;
- you who couldn’t speak Russian, even though you knew Russian,
born in 1900 as a subject of Tsar Nicholas, a saint by definition,
but since the Russkies killed your husband, you never spoke a word
again in their language.
- And you didn’t let me take part in May Day Parades or torchlight processions
on the occasion of the Den’ Pobedy, or to go to the barracks with school
on the October Revolution anniversary, even when I was appointed by
school to go with the prettiest girl in the class.
- And you were angry and filled with wrath when, together with local mates
I went to the Russkies’ better shops, behind the wall and the barbed wire
– because that was a disgrace.
- But when, with local rascals, for the glory of the fatherland, in memory
of grandfather Franciszek, we broke the windows in the barracks with stones,
dropped rotten eggs in the bakery’s air vent, threw empty bottles and bricks
back and forth with the children of the Russkies officers, hurled saltpetre balls
from a sling, or bought Kalashnikov shells from the soldiers in exchange
for pictures of invented sisters and cousins,
- you were also angry and filled with wrath – because that was a disgrace.
- Sabina, who called my turtle Slippy Flippy, while I named him Gamera,
for that was my favourite turtle-hero from a Japanese monster film;
he didn’t react to my calls, but he did to your voice.
- Perhaps it was because you let him eat things he wasn’t supposed
to eat, but which happened to be on hand in the kitchen.
- And I was angry and filled with wrath.
- Sabina, whom – as a child – I saw kneeling down every evening in your nightgown
by the sofa bed, facing the wall, to say your prayers, but I didn’t know what it was about
and who you were whispering to, looking at the wall.
- I was just wondering who this God of yours must have been, since he
remained silent just like that wall that you taught me to say my prayers to as well,
rectifying the omission of my father and my mother,
which made you angry and filled you with wrath.
- You, who said nothing, looking at my mother, who wasn’t yet my mother,
but a regular girl sitting in the kitchen of the house at Cicha Street
in the Polish town of Brzeg with a telegram in her hand
and perhaps even with tears in her eyes,
- and she didn’t know what to do in this terrible struggle, and you sighed
and simply said, “Love knows no confines, it follows no lines”, even though
for years I thought it was, “Heart is no servant, doesn’t follow orders.”
- And so it happened, my mother got up and went to the station and got on the train
and went to Miechowice, where my father lived at the time, who was not my father yet,
but a young boy who wanted to climb mountains, which he couldn’t afford
and tried to earn the money by working in a mine, as in those times a young man
could earn more money only in a mine.
- Sabina, whom I always remember as an elderly woman but sturdy, taking
big steps, who went to church at 6 every day, on Wednesday for longer,
cause of vespers. Always with your sister Hania, with locked arms,
when Hania was still alive. And then, when Hania was dead, you still went,
but without her.
- And then once you dreamt Hania cleaning upstairs in the house at Cicha,
which was strange, because all her life she lived on the ground floor, and you asked her,
“What are you doing, Hanka?” and she explained that she was cleaning the house
for you, because you were moving in with her soon,
and it was eight years after Hanka’s death,
- and you understood that it was time for you to get ready for the Himmelkommando.
- Resolved, you started on it, refusing food and drink, and you got lighter and lighter,
smaller and smaller, easier for the angels to carry you, should God send them for you.
- Blessed was your hand when it held the probably German beater
with a ceramic handle and when you gave your naughty grandchildren
and great-grandchildren a good hiding,
if there was a reason for it.
- Blessed was your hand when you grabbed a heavy pewter kettle,
red hot from sitting on a coal stove, because your son-in-law in a mad rage
seemed to be ready to strike your daughter, and you hissed, “Just try!”
And he didn’t try.
- And again blessed was your hand, when you slapped your daughter
with the back of your hand, for she, barefoot, in winter, was cleaning
the staircase in the house at Cicha Street, formerly Löberstrasse,
in the town of Brzeg, which meant neglecting the needs of the body,
that which is the temple of the Spirit, hence is sacred.
- But your anger did not last long and was not searing, even at the Russkies
who killed your only husband, Franciszek. For a pupil of the Master
is not to be hardened in anger. And you also did not harden your heart.
- Sabina, you who prayed for your son-in-law when he drank, screamed
at everybody and belted his daughters, mainly the eldest one,
for she took upon herself the offences of the younger ones,
and he probably not only used the belt,
and not only against his daughters.
- But you did not say a word against him and in front of his daughters
you did not let others say a word against him, for it is said to honour thy father
and thy mother.
- So when one of his rages was coming again, you herded the granddaughters
in front of the empty wall in the bedroom and told them to pray
“so that good God gives Jaś back his reason”, and good God was listening,
but just like the Polish police didn’t interfere with family disputes.
- And only sometimes, as if joking, you mumbled in Ukrainian under your nose that your
son-in-law was like “Ivan crappy pants whose name was arsehole”. Which is one and the same.
- Sabina, you who were only scared of God, and until your very late years
scared other household members by hiding on steep stairs to the attic or behind
the entrance doors marked “briefe” on a metal plate in the middle of the leaf,
- which inscription I took as a child as the name of the German owners
who after all could come back from the grave like zombies, and I didn’t know
what a zombie was, but I knew well what Russkies were and what Germans were,
and that they always could take you away from home or shoot you on the spot.
- And I was astonished that Mr and Mrs Briefe lived in every house on every street.
As if it was some huge, branched out, powerful family related to the entire
German nation.
- And you hid behind the door marked “briefe” and when somebody stood
in front of it, you suddenly shouted a loud “hoo!”, and even though you always
stood on the same side, as that was the only way to stay hidden, and even though
one could expect you there, you always managed to scare everyone.
- And you were not stopped by screaming and protesting, especially of your granddaughter
which you answered with a smile, “Why are you screeching like a banshee?”
or “Moszko shat on you, so I will a tad too”.
- For you snuffed smart alecks with a short,
“An arse has not seen the sun, now it’s a sun-tanned one,”
and to those outraged, asking rhetorically in anger and wrath,
“Grandma, what will it look like to people?!”,
you retorted sharply, “Like a camel’s arse,”
even though nobody ever witnessed you seeing an arse of a camel.
- You, who excused a powerful belch or burp with,
“Who is thinking of me – the late Mr Flea?”, and when people weren’t talking
much, you said into the space in the kitchen, “And so… bidniak said on the go”.
- And when your granddaughter was telling you off for spitting into the sink,
that later, when she was washing the dishes, she put her hands into grandma’s phlegm,
you replied with a smile, “Why so repulsed? Did I eat shit?!”
- And when somebody was painting a really gloomy vision, talking about things without
a chance for a better turn, you used to say bluntly, “Don’t be a tit, cause you’re talking shit”.
- And when somebody was complaining about their health, life being hard and generally
crappy, you used to look at them and when they stopped for a moment, you would say softly,
“You are tempting God.”
- Sabina, you who are now the last instance, I wonder what you would tell me
when the tsunami was flattening the Aceh Province, when the earthquake was razing
Iranian borderlands or Nepal, or Japan.
- And I know that you would tell me nothing, and that it is as important
as everything that could be said. I see you, you are sitting on the bench between
the German sink with cold water on the left hand side and a German table on the right.
- There is a newspaper on the table; the headline reports an earthquake in Mexico
and the year is 1984. You hold your rosary above the newspaper,
you look at printed letters and they form thousands of victims.
- You ask nothing, you blame nobody, you becall nobody.
And close by there is God. Silent like the wall in your room.
- He didn’t interfere when they were killing your husband, he was silent
when those who didn’t manage to escape across the Irtysh in winter
were axed off the benches in the back of a truck like dead icicles.
He didn’t force you to remain a widow for 50 years.
- Once again, he is not very talkative and doesn’t have much to say to you,
though he must hear you, for if not now, then when, if not you, then whom?
And you say nothing, though you move your lips.
And the beads of the rosary move around your hands.
- Sabina, you who first lost your sense of taste and for many months followed
your smell, even when it wrongly suggested that the hand cream from Pewex
was something that could taste deliciously, like green apples.
- And when your smell left you, your eyesight suggested that wood varnish
looked like tea and you could drink it, and a shampoo like gooseberry juice,
fresh, crisp, good to guzzle.
- And when you lost your taste, smell, when your eyesight failed, as did the hearing,
your memory also started departing, so you were short of words to express
what could not be expressed anyway, for example that it was raining
and there would be no more rain like this again.
- Perhaps that is why you called the last snow in your life white sand falling from the sky,
and then you gasped at the ridiculousness of what you were saying. It was weed,
weed was falling from the sky today. And we didn’t believe you, like some idiots.
- Sabina, you for whom in the last years everybody was either Monia or Radeczek,
regardless of gender, age, degree of kinship, because everybody was dear
and had a space in one of the pockets sewn onto the heart.
- Who visited your granddaughter’s dreams after death because she wouldn’t say
a prayer for you over your grave, and in those dreams you were like a cold fish
caught in winter in an ice-hole on the Irtysh,
if it was at all possible to make an ice-hole in winter there.
- Don’t pray for us. Don’t commend us to anybody. Do not take us in your protection.
Don’t be our patroness or our mediatrix. Don’t reconcile us with anybody.
- Stand by the door, like you used to when you were completely transparent
like a viaticum that the young priest had denied you when your taste, smell,
eyesight, hearing and memory left you. And say again, what you said over
and over every evening, leading us to anger and wrath,
- Radeczek, I’ll go lie down now, so everybody can do what they want
and what they like. There is food in the pantry. There is gravy, there are spuds
first class, so eat if you like. I’m leaving you in charge of the household.
- Good night, good night and once more good night.
Radosław Wiśniewski is a Polish poet, prose writer and literary critic, co-founder and president of the indie publisher KIT Stowarzyszenie Żywych Poetów. He won several literary prizes in Poland. He published ten volumes of poetry: Nikt z przydomkiem (Nobody with a Nickname, 2003); Albedo (2006); NeoNoe (2009); Abdykacja – wiersze zaangażowane i nie (Abdication. Poems Engaged and Not, 2013); Inne bluesy (Other Blueses, 2015); Psalm do św. Sabiny (Psalm to Saint Sabina, 2016, 2022); Dzienniki Zenona Kałuży (Zenon Kałuża’s Diaries, 2017); Kwestionariusz putinowski i inne medytacje w czasach postprawdy (The Putin Questionnaire and Other Meditations in the Times of Post-Truth, 2018); Korniki gniewu (Borers of Anger, 2021) and Siedem książek porzuconych (Seven Abandoned Books, 2022). He also authored several prose books: Palimpsest Powstanie (Uprising Palimpsest, 2019); Transmigracja (Transmigration, 2019) and 1939 Apokalipsa. Początek (1939 Apocalypse. The Beginning, 2020).
His poems have been translated into English, German, Spanish, Czech and Hungarian.
Radosław’s social media:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1288511654
https://www.facebook.com/autorautor74
https://www.facebook.com/groups/991386191860402
https://www.facebook.com/Borsukliteracki
Anna Błasiak is a poet, translator and managing editor of the European Literature Network. She has published two bilingual poetry and photography books (with Lisa Kalloo) Kawiarnia przy St James’s Wrena w porze lunchu / Café by Wren’s St-James-in-the-Fields, Lunchtime (Holland House Books, 2020) and Rozpętanie / Deliverance (Holland House Books, 2024). She also published a book-length interview, Lili. Lili Stern-Pohlmann in conversation in Anna Blasiak. She translates poetry, fiction and non-fiction between Polish and English. Her recent poetry translations include Aneta Kamińska’s Czernovitz-Charmovitz (co-translated with Bohdan Piasecki, Arc Publications, 2024) and Łucja Dudzińska’s BezTroska. Próby wyrazu / Mis-Concern. Attempts at Expression (FONT, 2024). Anna regularly reviews books in translation for the ELN, where she also runs a monthly poetry column Poetry Travels and a blog devoted to Polish literature The Polka. She is one of the editors of Babiniec Literacki, a Polish platform publishing verse written by women poets.
Anna’s social media:
https://www.facebook.com/anna.blasiak.142/
https://www.instagram.com/anna__blasiak
https://www.threads.net/@anna__blasiak