VOICES FROM POLAND: THE RESTORATION OF ORDER

...it was perfectly clear that those troop movements are against the movement and for movement organized out in the open air, against the disorders and for the order that activates new blast furnaces, against the resistance movement, for a move backward, but to clarify the situation they will shoot at anything that moves, guns lowered to eye level, (just try it, brother, just move your head), these forceps keeping the country's head from moving...

...Translated from the Polish by RICHARD LOURIE q 48...

...According to unconfirmed reports delayed in reaching us due to unfavorable snowy weather and barbed wire...

...Slowacki According to unconfirmed reports, somewhere some hope is expiring its lung pierced by a bullet, a meaning clubbed to death, better this not be seen by the satellite eye that watches over the world, better that those celestial cameras that can catch the glow of a cigarette not see the torches of the living, better that a pillow of cloud be pressed airtight to the lips justifying our inability to serve as eye witnesses to this offensive, demanding, run-of-the-mill death 7 After all, there were so many secret files discovered years later in some forgotten safe, there have been so many people who years later finally found the courage to tell how their fingernails had been torn out, there have been so many lists with little crosses by the names and so many graves where those people were buried by night in plastic bags brought to light years later...

...I can see it and I cannot, I can hear you and I cannot hear you through the walls, the Atlantic's roar, the racket of treads, you in the intervals between one beating or arrest and the next saying your favorite wise-ass lines—"bullshit on toast" and "nothing to flip about" followed hard by life-and-death concerns, always in that same stammering falsetto...

...RICHARD LOURIE 1 According to unconfirmed reports...

...Something of a nonperson and unpoet in present-day Poland, his translations from English do, however, continue to appear...

...I'm reading your articles smuggled out of Bialoleka...

...Except they went to see different movies...

...Sometimes our laughter disarms them, sometimes our gravity...

...45 10 According to unconfirmed reports that figure behind the plexiglass shield may at heart be well-intentioned, the voice barking the command "Fire...

...You're right, A. Nothing to flip about...

...It's true that we tried to prove to them that we aren't children but grownup people, men over thirty, no matter what...

...The whole thing seems too much like one of your absurd jokes...

...And then what seems a bundle of raw nerves straightens out into a line, elegant, exact, victorious...

...And always would be...

...and so it had begun to seem impossible that anyone still counted on covering his tracks, still counted on the stone thrown into the water vanishing entirely with no bottom to stop its fall 44 8 Where did you get that leaflet, sir, what is your reason for being out on the streets at this hour, what gives you the right to wear that black arm band, quiet, we're asking the questions and being polite about it too as you can see and we expect that politeness back, sir, who gave you the right to these rights, whom does your Poland belong to, where is the Mother of God hiding, contacts, names, addresses, quiet, we're out here working late at night and listen to you is that how they taught you to talk polite at the university on the state's money, who taught you those expressions, who instigated that expression on your face, quiet, we inflict suffering, you must realize what the times are like and where you are living, dates, names, facts, just you be civil 9 W, I'm sending you some brushes through a friend though they'll probably never reach you...

...At bottom one is always free...

...For us being grownup was more like Bogart's grimace, a bitter irony that had to be swallowed because you don't spit such things out with people around...

...Shouting freedom justice different stuff, over...

...For them being a man meant wearing a shoulder holster, driving fast cars screeching around corners, and shooting like a pro from a half squat, using both hands...

...Little cause to be surprised by the decisive reaction...

...It's those same guys— remember how we laughed looking down at them on duty in their car beneath our window, frustrated cops, while we, free men, listened to a record of Schubert's Winterreise and drank Bulgarian wine...

...What are you waiting for, Eagle, give them a taste of it then bust their heads, over...

...Your painting of Prince Jozef Poniatowski, his muttonchops flaring as he galloped to the Elstera while his horse commented: "I knew it would end like this...

...Things are getting hot here too, don't lose your head, where can I get some people, I need some too, over...

...In 1977 he was fired from his teaching position at the university in Poznan and was without work for three years until pressure from the Solidarity movement caused his reinstatement in 1980...

...it seemed impossible to us, it seemed that despite themselves those forceps were actually assisting in a birth 4 L., I know you won't receive this letter but I'm sending it anyway...

...But I know you still look the same, still jaunty, the moustache a la Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail, the same pronouncements: "If a man over thirty wakes up without something aching, he isn't alive...

...I really don't know what to say...

...That hyper-accuracy of yours...

...Cambridge, Mass., 12/81 — 7/82 S.B...

...17 With so much barbed wire, so many seas in between, this cannister of gas that had not been shot at me at all has, despite everything, landed at my feet...

...It's December, the days are short, it'll be dark and icy, they'll be cold, they won't last long without heat or food in the what do you call them there, shipyards, 42 plus with the water cannons, it'll be a snap, you know, and when they're in tents out in the open, they'll start fading fast, one after the...

...Your high-pitched triumphant stammering, the lock of hair wound around a finger, the cellophane from a pack of cigarettes balled and flattened in your hand as you hold forth...

...Now they're top dog...

...Take care, W, let's see another painting like that...

...Plenty to choose from...

...The only thing one has to remember are a couple of simple lines, really questions, so short they can be smuggled out on a scrap of cellophane balled and flattened by a hand...

...They're walking around and shouting, the usual, over...

...His poetry, including I Know This Is Not Right (1977) and A Triptych of Cement, Weariness, and Snow (1981), blends social concerns with linguistic experiment...

...I heard you're trying to paint in prison and that you're looking bad after your hunger strike...

...He is now teaching Polish language and literature at Harvard...

...The funny thing is that they, our high school classmates, smarter about what they did after graduation, had the same thing we did in mind...

...I know you know that, even now, especially now...

...Maybe that's why I remember everything so well, because of that urgent stammering rhythm...

...there's no chance of this doing any good, it's pointless, their masks are airtight, and it'll make my eyes sting even longer but still I pick it up and throw it back at them...

...Weakness is your forte but here you'd butt in to say "You're being paradoxical...

...Translations of his poetry can be found in Czeslaw Milosz's Post-War Polish Poetry and his essays have appeared in the New Republic, Encounter, and Tri-Quarterly...

...Even if there were no paper in the cell you could have always memorized your poems, two, three, six lines, every word essential...

...I'm sure you won't take all of this too seriously, their crummy victory, their satisfaction that now at last they can bash faces with impunity...

...The black ink of those letters will always seep past the censor's stamp...

...Which should be treated with caution...

...Remember—detained for wearing a black arm band you silenced them with a curt "of course" when chortling they asked you if you really believed God exists...

...43 5 Eagle, this is Falcon, what's up on your end, over...

...You got tear gas, over...

...6 At least let them see us as we die...

...he retains a Polish passport, his future linked with Poland's...

...According to unconfirmed reports, there's little cause for surprise...

...According to unconfirmed reports, things had gotten out of hand, air was being sucked into lungs too greedily, the sense of reality had been lost—kicks in the ass were being refused— the dialogue between brass knuckles and jaws had been disrupted, the fault of the latter...

...14 We are asking you to disperse or we will employ force, I'm warning you, we're not using blanks, bullets aren't blind, they know the way to the heart, they can hit you where you live, so please give it some thought, or we'll use force, I'm warning you, our nightsticks are long enough to beat sense into any head that's raised or asking for it, so please abandon hope or we'll use gas I should point out this is tear gas someone will weep bitterly here, I want this square, this brain, this country cleared of hope so it will be pure as a tear 15 According to unconfirmed reports, only seven people have been killed, what does that count for, seven people, the entire operation cost surprisingly little, its efficiency and speed were truly impressive, and even if there were seventeen or seventy corpses, widows, pools of blood, what does that count for in the end...

...A reaction caused by the will to restore order so that everyone knows his place...

...Yeah right, so they won't ever want to try it again...

...So you're still free, well, you always were...

...2 Coordination and precision, that's what counts, see...

...other, you got to coordinate these things with precision, you know, December only comes once a year 3 After all, we spent so many nights listening to reports of troop movements, unsure of their actual intentions, where the peristaltic movement of the treads was heading, to what degree of longitude they could advance...

...47 16 R., I received your letter (opened and stamped "Censored"), I recognized that calligraphy of yours at once...

...He was one of the cofounders of KOR in 1976 and a coeditor of Zapis and Krytyka, two of the most influential independent publications...

...But there's something to it, nothing is stronger than those fragile ivory miniatures, those spare hieroglyphs, on the thinnest of paper...

...may have something else entirely in mind, that tank crashing down the gate may be opening up some new perspectives, the club coming down on the man on the ground may be a barrier protecting him from something far worse, let's not jump to conclusions, let us be objective, everyone deserves a chance 11 I hereby declare my loyalty and my willingness to return home, I am committed to obeying lawful authority and to warning everyone I know of what has happened to me, details of which I am not to provide, my signature written in my own hand attests to the truthfulness of the above, any suggestion of coercion is fictitious as I will testify in the immediate future in an unrehearsed television interview 12 After all, we knew so many of them, their lips pressed tight, holding themselves stiffly, the face of a sullen infant above a grownup's tie, forever deprived of the ability to laugh at themselves, solemnly taking the lash from the wall to punish their children, signing other people's decisions with a fancy flourish, slamming the family table or office desk with a ruler (that's how it is, you hear me): it's impossible to think that it was all so lethally infantile, all that smallness on so grand a scale, that aging children had taken on the task of setting things like life and hope in order, serious things no matter what, and which, despite everything, are better left to us, the grownups 46 13 A., there's no chance of this letter reaching you, I don't even know if there's any sense in writing it...