On crossing the border to Poland by Irena Szirtes (1991)

I can’t write a poem about stars:

How sky-forests blazed,

How night-suns swarmed and

Burned their white-hot way

Into our child-wide eyes.

I can’t express how our feet felt,

On Polish soil at last because

Communism fell, how we

Ran from the coach

While our heads flipped back

And our mouths hung open,

And we lived those

Staring star-moments

 I can’t describe.

“I thought my mind was playing

Tricks,” Dad whispered,

“About how bright the stars were

When I was a boy.”

So we melded, or re-melded,

With all once seen,  then lost ;

Our idea of belonging,

Of who we were,  shifted

In convoluted visceral places.

Just as his nightmares came to a child

Too small to know about war,

I felt memories of the soil’s touch,

And of the bright stars,  though I had none.

Grief and awe furnace-blazed,

Till spellbound joy poured up

And over, into our hands.

I can’t describe it any more

Than I can describe

Poetry in the wind,

Birth-joy for a new grandchild, the

Air-dance of a racing hound, or

Time, lulled to sleep in the company of

Stilled horses.

I can’t express how our feet felt,

On Polish soil at last

Because Communism fell.

I can’t write a poem about stars. 

Irena Szirtes with her father. Zakopane,Poland 1991