《INDUSTRIOUS AMAZEMENT A NOTEBOOK》.pdf

ANNA KAMIENSKA Industrious Amazement: A Notebook I exchange my life for words . Weak, uncertain currency. * * * Saint Augustine calls the kingdom of the saved Jerusalem, and the kingdom of the damned Babylon. Maybe thats what Norwid has in mind when he says I write from Babylon to Jerusalem — and the letters get through. As a spring makes its way to the light, to air. Its toil, its drudgery, its dark transit, like despair. Thats how the poet works for words . Through muscles, move- ments. Thats how J.* wrote poems . He paced, he muttered, he waved his arms as though gathering and grasping words . I wasnt looking for God at all. I sought my Dead One . Ill never cease repeating this, amazed. * * * Another eschatological dream. I never dream of J . dead. But here I am at the cemetery and his grave opens . I see him whole, lying un- touched by decay. But his body is completely covered with fishes. I see their dead white bellies. Only his head is bare. He opens his eyes. Kamienskas husband, poet Jan Spiewak, who died of cancer on December 22,1967 . ANNA KAMIENSKA 5O3 Theyre clear, hlue . I run hack and forth, calling his name until Im hoarse. He doesnt notice me, he doesnt hear, as if hes absorbed in something else. Finally someone comes up to him . And suddenly his head changes into the head of another hearded man, who smiles and extends his hands — to a doctor, a surgeon, an apothecary? Still in the dream. Im coming hack with PaweL I say, its as if he wanted to show that different people are made of the same material. Yes, he answers, that dumh Kaniewsk