Friday, December 7, 2018

Anna Swir / A Conversation Through the Door




A Conversation Through the Door
by Anna Swir
Translated by Czeslaw Milosz & Leonard Nathan


At five in the morning
I knock on his door.
I say through the door:
in the hospital at Sliska Street
your son, a soldier, is dying.

He half-opens the door,
does not remove the chain.
Behind him his wife
shakes.

I say: your son asks his mother
to come.
He says: the mother won't come.
Behind him the wife
shakes.

I say: the doctor allowed us
to give him wine.
He says: please wait.

He hands me a bottle through the door,
locks the door,
locks the door with a second key.

Behind the door the wife
begins to scream as if she were in labor.




       

No comments:

Post a Comment