DANIEL HEALY

Postcard

November

by the sea-front

drinking watery tea

in a bad café

(accents are flatter here)

it’s empty

the only sound

is either frying bacon

or the tide coming in.

Oh, I forgot to mention

it is a beautiful day

so cold & very clear.

?

what sort of person

notices

the gorilla

in a basketball game.

* * *

GRZEGORZ WRÓBLEWSKI

When We Suddenly Feel the Beauty of the Earth

Translated by Adam Zdrodowski

First I outgrew my father. Then I put him hurriedly

into a coffin and myself began to shrink.

(What’s the use of today’s rainbow, the innocent daisies and this smiling

shepherd who claims he saw an angel flying

over the meadows?)

We didn’t manage to plant an oak forest and we never

went to the river Brilthor.

We had great plans

that never worked out.

An Arab Fruit Seller and Old Eulogists of Death

Translated by Adam Zdrodowski

Though his whole family was wiped out, he’s happy because of every

orange sold.

Look at him carefully and then

Pray to the Lord to make him change your martyred

characters...

While you are here just for a while, don’t pester me with death.

We’ll have enough of it when it asks for us.

* * *

GILL McEVOY

Oranges and Apples Don’t Mix

They do not mix, my mother said,

never put them in a bowl together.

They will breathe each other all night.

not like lovers who only crave

to enter the other's skin,

but like husbands and wives

after quarrels,

lying stiff all night, too angry to touch,

the smell of their rage poisoning

the air, souring the flesh.

* * *

JOSEPHINE VON ZITZEWITZ

Hourglass

There is a crackle in the air,

barely there, like interferences

caught by the radio next door.

Not radio waves. 

Something more immediate,

something that is flowing, like sand

through the neck of an hourglass.

No hand is mighty enough

to turn the glass.

The sand runs freely,

not marking minutes.

Only the shadows

tell of their passage.

Minutes keep coming and going,

murmuring, murmuring. 

I listen to their susurration, mesmerised.

Startled, my mind starts to haggle 

with the one who set the hourglass. 

Reason insists that the number

of sand grains in an hourglass

is finite.

Outside, the rain keeps whispering to the windowpane.

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