Cyrillic makes these borderlands
Doubly foreign, makes me read
Like a child, with fingers, slowly,
As if picking my way gingerly over
Wet stepping stones, crossing the Bug
As did armies and frontiers before me,
And ideologies too, shackled to their
Misanthropic ballast.

Each headstone is a place, a time.
Here a birth in times where landlords owned
The souls of serfs, dead and alive.
There a death, in peaceful old age,
In the leaden years of terror
Where younger souls were claimed by
Trench coated men of the night who came
In dark saloon cars that were heard
By everyone and no-one.

History’s dark husk cracked open and
Spilled seeds of light to shine on
The domed church on its hill, shine too
On the busy bearded pop, shine on the Catholic
Tolling the Angelus bell, shine on the mound
Of the silent synagogue, on those misanthropy
Denied a grave, illuminate these wounds of God,
Enjoining remembrance, as if to heal them.

From Polish Radio’s Story Time — Poland inspires poetry