Musi być do wyboru, Zmieniać się, żeby tylko nic się nie zmieniło. To łatwe, niemożliwe, trudne, warte próby. Oczy ma, jeśli trzeba, raz modre, raz s… - Wisława Szymborska

there were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.
suitcases checked and standing side by side.
one night, perhaps, the same dream
grown hazy by morning.

every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.

In Heraclitus' river a fish has imagined the fish of all fish, a fish kneels to the fish, a fish sings to the fish, a fish begs the fish to ease its fishy lot.

Memory Finally Memory’s finally found what it was after. My mother has turned up, my father has been spotted. I dreamed up a table and two chairs. They sat. They were mine again, alive again for me. The two lamps of their faces gleamed at dusk as if for Rembrandt. Only now can I begin to tell in how many dreams they’ve wandered, in how many crowds I dragged them out from underneath the wheels, in how many deathbeds they moaned with me at their side. Cut off, they grew back, but never straight. The absurdity drove them to disguises. So what if they felt no pain outside me, they still ached within me. In my dreams, gawking crowds heard me call out Mom to a bouncing, chirping thing up on a branch. They made fun of my father’s hair in pigtails. I woke up ashamed. So, finally. One ordinary Friday night they suddenly came back exactly as I wanted. In a dream, but somehow freed from dreams, obeying just themselves and nothing else. In the picture’s background possibilities grew dim, accidents lacked the necessary shape. Only they shone, beautiful because just like themselves. They appeared to me for a long, long, happy time. I woke up. I opened my eyes. I touched the world, a chiseled picture frame.