Warsaw

In a worn corner of the city,

Like the fringes of a book I have studied and thought I knew well,

I climb upwards, crossing dark projections and sharp, rusty edges

In a subdued, half-forgotten green light, while a street away

the crowds gather to cross the well-treaded pavement,

between the well-understood buildings.

It is only when we chance to cross creased , peeling passages like these, 

the veins of the city, 

that we are reminded of the inborn ,

intrinsic loneliness of our hometown. 

The city that should be, and maybe even is, a ghost, half-existent. 

Rebuilt on hundreds of sorrows,

it is the spring flower shooting out of a plane of annihilation, 

The first shoot after a forest fire

a desert rose, uncertainly existing.