Lessons in Astronomy
for my son
The middle-aged woman, your mother,
one day will tell you, that while reading
a paper on the origins of the Solar System
on the deck of the Wootton Bridge Inn,
she glimpsed spectres of timeless planets
in the eyes of gillyflowers.
And a snail traced the Milky Way
on a paper napkin.
That day, the great heron eggs hatched in the
floodplains,
and the sky was so clear
that she could ask it for answers
you sought in your astronomy books,
but she preferred to watch the road
where a speeding lorry
branded with ‘Starway’ crushed
wild apples on the asphalt.
Spithead in November
After the storm, the tide recedes.
The pier dissolves in the fog.
On the beach, ravens devour mussels
smashed against the stones.
I stroll along the silt-coated
levee, counting ships, and suddenly
in the fissures of the grey sea wall
discover thousands of green, living snails.
Boys
Selling Lemonade
They live next door, on my housing estate.
Their grandmother is dead, dad’s locked up,
Mum’s benefits barely cover food,
the cheap wine she sips in secret
listening until midnight to Lady Gaga’s song
from A Star Is Born: ‘Tell me somethin’, girl,
are you happy in this modern world?’
In the morning they carry empties to the shop,
buy lemons, sugar, sparkling water
and in the damp kitchen prepare lemonade.
It’s raining. Only seagulls feast by the rubbish bins
on the estate. The wind knocks over the table,
flaps the tablecloth like a flag of an unknown country.
I pay them a pound for a cup and, sipping the drink
that tastes of soap and sour rainwater,
I remember how, during summer holidays,
I stood by the road selling cornflower wine
I had fermented on a windowsill,
and on Śmigus-Dyngus[1]
I topped up perfume
with ditch water and sprayed the neighbours
for some money, an Easter egg, or a candy bar.
The Lullaby
Sleep – tomorrow will bring Polish TV,
a pack of fags on the doorstep.
A fairy godmother will top up the coin-shower,
and you can relax under a hot stream.
Sleep! A rivulet
of cider flows across the floor.
The lit joint
transforms into the fern flower[2].
Your dreams come
true. You will return home.
Sleep! You will
stop drinking, leave the farm
where stems cut
your hands,
and teatime is
sacred.
Sleep! The nights
on the promised island are shorter.
The alarm clock
shrieks at five in the morning.
Your bicycle,
stiff with cold, waits by the gate.
Will you go
mushroom picking with grandpa?
The Pear
for Maciej
I stole it from
Virginia Woolf’s garden
on that rainy day,
because
it reminded me of the scent of your skin;
I
furtively slipped it into my pocket
while
tourists photographed
the
flower beds and waterweeds in the pond
and took selfies
by the writer’s grave.
On the way back along the banks of the River Ouse
I clenched my hand
around the cold fruit,
remembering our trip to Rodmell:
the cows on the path and our dog barking –
he was supposed to be our only child,
but died a few months later.
There is a kind of
silence when
the ticking of a clock
becomes the rattle of train wheels,
you leave the station door ajar
and stand before me with a bouquet of roses.
For a few seconds time suspends
in the flesh of a rotting pear.
[1] Śmigus-Dyngus – a Polish Easter Monday tradition in which people playfully splash one another with water to celebrate spring and renewal.
[2]The fern flower – a mythical Slavic plant said to bloom only on Midsummer Night and grant luck or hidden knowledge to whomever finds it.
Wioletta Greg (Wioletta Grzegorzewska) – a Polish
novelist and poet. She is the author of several poetry collections, and four
novels: Secret Cloud Conductor, Wolf River, Additional Soul, Accommodations
(trans. by Jennifer Croft), and Swallowing Mercury (Guguły, trans. by Eliza
Marciniak). Her work has been translated into numerous languages, including
Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Slovenian, Korean, Welsh. Her
books have received wide international recognition. Her poetry collection Finite
Formulae & Theories of Chance (Arc Publications, UK; trans. by Marek
Kazmierski), was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in Canada, one of the
most prestigious international awards for poetry. She was also longlisted for
the Man Booker International Prize (2017), and shortlisted for, among others,
the Prix Pierre-François Caillé, the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation,
the Nike Literary Award, the Gdynia Literary Award, and the Michalski Prize.
She is the recipient of the Golden Owl Award in Vienna, and the Majewska Prize
(London, 2022). She lives in Great Britain.
Kasia Jaronczyk is a Polish-Canadian writer, artist and microbiologist. She immigrated to Canada at the age of 14. Her debut short story collection Lemons was published in 2017 by Mansfield Press. She is a co-editor of the only anthology of Polish-Canadian short stories Polish(ed): Poland Rooted in Canadian Fiction (Guernica Editions, 2017). Her stories were short-listed for the Bristol Prize 2016 and long-listed for CBC Short Story Prize 2010. She has published in Canadian literary magazines such as TNQ, Room, Prairie Journal, Carousel, The Nashwaak Review, Postscripts to Darkness, and in anthologies Wherever I Find Myself. Essays by Canadian Immigrant Women (Miriam Matejova, Ed. Caitlin Press, April 2017) and The Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology (2016. Vol 9.). Find out more about Kasia on her website: https://kasiajaronczyk.weebly.com/
