.................................
Witkacy
.................................

We are separated
you and I
one hundred years
a trance partition
the one way glass of death

I only know you
a prescient ghost
who saw
before the war a future
the world a vast concentration
camp

You made light as long you could
with Harlequin walks
answering the door nude
ranking friends and publishing your
likes dislikes
easy now to smile at these antics
then an ever present
curling question
mark

Cocaine in your pipe
Malthus and morphine
The tally of nie palenie
(days without smoke)
makes me wonder
if you truly had your fill
when you smiled that last
powder thin blood
brittle on the frostbit grass
below your drying wine lips
refugee picnic

You couldn't run
you wouldn't
get far
you were of a day
slanting
in the dusk
September

So it wasn't the Chinese
but unholy marriage
Stalin and Hitler
outflanked as they delivered
after years foreboding
your flickering shadows
Absolute Form

To go on living as a jot
less than yourself
you ruled out
your firm and its thousand
faces
  (many your own)
kissed
  farewell to autumn
dreamy and crisp
insatiable as a glass negative

For Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz
on his hundredth birthday.
His last words:
"Ya ne budu zhit' pod merku."
("I won't go on living as
a jot less than myself.")
(1885-1939)

.................................
D.S. Black
.................................

 
Copyright © D.S. Black
May 1998

...a poem in this room by Perry Sams...
candy
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