First you load requests into your devotions
like cargo into a railcar, the overburdened rolling stock
heaves toward the port of New Heaven so sluggishly
that half the goods pass their expiry date. Later
you start to realize that the content of the cars
is not weighty, so you send them off empty,
entire rosaries roll toward New Heaven,
and the mere sound of them reassures you. Until at last
the railcars cease to interest you, you’re keeping an eye on
the timetable, that’s enough to avoid coming off the rails.
And then you suddenly notice you’ve lost the attraction
of prayer, after all, you’ve long since been living with the family
in New Heaven. Go then onto the loading ramp and get back down
to grueling physical labor.
Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Tadeusz Dąbrowski is editor in chief of Topos, a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry, and a teacher of creative writing at the University of Gdańsk. His poems have been published in many journals in Poland and abroad, and his work has been translated into thirty languages.
Image courtesy of Getty Images, for Unsplash+.
