Facing the Same Thing in New Ways

Months later, in a senseless series of gunfire questions
The boy inquired about me seeing my mother dead.
I darted my eyes at his mother,
Blushing in horror, bombarded, waiting for her to tell him to just shut up,
To stop asking such awful questions, shut up!
I wanted to scream, but we had to be kind about the Autism and we understood,
But why didn’t she take him away?
To stop making me think about my mother’s damn bones.

He confronted me with that bag of bones, as if it were there staring back at me,
Just a plastic bag, and dust, and the few last pieces of bone.
Oh, the difference between the painted face and the dress
Versus the bag and bone
Once my mother? Pulled out to be spilled out?
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Alexandra Ustach

Upon First Meeting You

I’ll tell you right now

that the problem is it’s all autobiographical.

It’s never not, meaning always is.

The lingering past dictates my present day—

My everyday,

my can’t-get-a-cab-whenever-I-need-one-day

my-two-job-two-class-everyday

my-apathetic-want-to-feel-happy-day

my-can’t-feel-aroused-day

my-feel-nothing-about-everything-day.

Clinging to the longing for childhood, still,

my father with his attempt to comfort

states with all his emotional wisdom,

“When you’re a kid it’s easier to not have these

adult feelings of loneliness,”

but I can’t help but wonder when I didn’t feel like this.

When I was five?

Six came too soon and so did

their divorce and at fifteen, her death.

The life and death I can’t get over

may never get over

but hopefully one day the death.

See, even now I’ve let it

climb into this poem.

Uncontrollably me,

The life I wish to emulate and yet be

nothing like.

And upon first meeting you,

if we were to come face-to-face,

I’d never tell you, be polite,

keep it to myself until you ask,

Well what about your mother?

And I usually tell the truth,

but sometimes play along as if

She is still here.

Alexandra Ustach

Orphan Absence , by Vasko Popa

You didn't have a real father

The day you first saw the world within you

Your mother was not at home

It was a mistake you were born

Built like an empty gorge

You smell of absence

Alone you gave birth to yourself

You fidget with rags on fire

Break your heads one after the other

Jump in and out of your mouths

To give youth back to your old mistake

Bend down naked if you can

Down to my last letter

And follow its track

It seems to me my little orphans

That it leads

Into some sort of presence

part of "Heaven's Ring"

Translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic

The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry 196-197

Under a Certain Little Star by Wisława Szymborska

I apologize to coincidence for calling it necessity.

I apologize to necessity just in case I'm mistaken.

Let happiness be not angry that I take it as my own.

Let the dead not remember they scarcely smolder in my memory.

I apologize to time for the muchness of the world overlooked per second.

I apologize to old love for regarding the new as the first.

Forgive me, far-off wars, for bringing flowers home.

Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.

I apologize to those who cry out of the depths for the minuet-record.

I apologize to people at railway stations for sleeping at five in the morning.

Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing now and again.

Pardon me, deserts, for not rushing up with a spoonful of water.

And you, O falcon, the same these many years, in that same cage,

forever staring motionless at that self-same spot,

absolve me, even though you are but a stuffed bird.

I apologize to the cut-down tree for the table's four legs.

I apologize to big questions for small answers.

O Truth, do not pay me too much heed.

O Solemnity, be magnanimous unto me.

Endure, mystery of existence, that I pluck out the threads of your train.

Accuse me not, O soul, of possessing you but seldom.

I apologize to everything that I cannot be everywhere.

I apologize to everyone that I cannot be every man and woman.

I know that as long as I live nothing can justify me,

because I myself am an obstacle to myself.

Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words,

and later try hard to make them seem light.

Translated from the Polish by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire

from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry pages 141-142