Nativity on Poland Street
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My Catherine, it’s evening. I’ve stoked up the stove; the kettle’s hissing on the hob. Come and have supper when spirits gather round as ever.
From secret rooms come sounds of music— flute and harp soothe our souls troubled over the laid paper of our daily bread.
In the dark planks of the floor a grain of light will grow up into a flower unspoken among so many words raging round, vain words, flowerless, frozen.
What am I to think of us? Two people in a house on Poland Street childless, with only sometimes a stray cat, no money, no plenty, only fools’ hope, yet I believe that the eyes of your soul are not darkened,
that you look out at me through them just as you did long ago with the same loving sadness over the world and the finitude of things. You knew that children would go away, whatever. Yet I see no shadow of loneliness in your face.
Our love is the hinge that opens the door to the inside of our friendly world, [End Page 109] for objects are not only the gravity of dark material, but also the seed of light.
So we in this life are the reapers of light. Together from fields known only to us we bring in the bright sheaves first into the barn of imagination, then lay them out softly on copper-plate to dry.
My Catherine, when snow and cold mists have enfolded the streets, even tonight we shall work on a press that smells of olives, to the praise of the voices that call us.
Tadeusz Sławek is Professor of English and American Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland, and from 1996–2002 served as its President. He has published extensively on William Blake, H.D. Thoreau, Robinson Jeffers, and Jacques Derrida, alongside several volumes of his own poetry in Polish. Together with the double bass player Bogdan Mizerski, he performs “essays for voice and double bass,” the genre represented by the poem included in this issue. tadeuszslawek@poczta.onet.pl
Jean Ward is a graduate of St. Anne’s College, Oxford. She was awarded a doctoral degree by Gdańsk University, where she teaches at the Institute of British and American Studies, for her work in Polish on the Polish reception of T. S. Eliot’s poetry. Besides a study entitled Christian Poetry in the Post-Christian Day: Geoffrey Hill, R. S. Thomas, Elizabeth Jennings (Peter Lang, 2009), she has published poetry in translation, particularly of the contemporary poet Andrzej Szuba. angjmw@univ.gda.pl
Editor’s note:
This is the opening piece from Drzewo aniołów. Życie i śmierć Williama Blake’a (Tree of the Angels. The Life and Death of William Blake), a full-length performance piece exploring the life and work of the English poet, printer, and engraver William Blake (1757–1827). It was written to be accompanied by a video visualization, together with a double bass and drums, in a form the author describes as “An Essay for Voice and Double Bass.” Blake’s poetic oeuvre constitutes a unique contribution to the genre of visionary and prophetic literature. [End Page 110]
