“I must take them to the cobbler,
they’ve only got slightly
worn-down heels,”

says my mother, holding
my winter boots
from the days when I had a wife.

 

Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

 

 

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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.

 

Photo by Oziel Gómez on Unsplash