MY
MOTHER TALKS ABOUT 1. THE PLACES SHE LIVED She has
the peasants' view of the world: He was
shouting, screaming. And my
father worked hard, sawing We were always being moved around. 2. HOW HER MOTHER AND SISTER DIED Sometimes,
my mother says, her home The singing
prayer leads her to the grave She wonders
if God will remember She waves
the dreams away with her hand 3. THE BEETS She tells
me of the beets she dug up The first
beet she remembers, She ate
the raw beet, even though She says,
sometimes she pretended If she
could've given them her breasts She wonders
what was her reward 4. WHAT THE WAR TAUGHT HER My mother
learned that sex is bad, She learned
that if you are stupid She learned
that only the young survive She learned
that the world is a broken place She learned
that you don't pray
Biographical sketch John Guzlowski John Guzlowski received an Illinois Arts Council Poetry Award for Language of Mules, a book of poems about his parents’ experiences as slave laborers and displaced persons in Nazi Germany during and after the Second World War. His poems have also appeared in such journals as Atlanta Review, Negative Capability, Manhattan Review, and Madison Review. His essays on Isaac Singer and other contemporary American authors have appeared in Polish Review, Shofar, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Modern Fiction Studies, The Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, Studies in Jewish American Literature, and the Polish quarterly Akcent. Currently, he teaches Contemporary American Literature and Poetry Writing at Eastern Illinois University. His email address is jzguzlowski@eiu.edu |
Dear Friends,
The poem remembers my dad and the other old Poles who lived around Humboldt Park in Chicago remembering the Poland they lost.
POLAND They'll never see it again, these old Poles with their dreams of Poland. My father told me when I was a boy that those who tried in '45 were turned back at the borders by shoeless Russians dressed in rags and riding shaggy ponies. The Poles fled through the woods, the unlucky ones left behind, dead or what's worse wounded, the lucky ones gone back to wait in the old barracks in the concentration and labor camps in Gatersleben or Wildflecken for some miracle that would return them to Poznan or Katowice. But God wasn't listening or His hands were busy somewhere else. Later, in America these Poles gathered with their brothers and with their precious sons and daughters every May 3, Polish Constitution Day, to pray for the flag. There was no question what the colors stood for, red for all that bleeding sorrow, white for innocence. And always the old songs telling the world Poland would never fall so long as poppies flower red, and flesh can conquer rock or steel. John Guzlowski |
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© by Heinz Leitsch |