Beth Winter

They kept you, little son, from dreams like trembling butterflies, they wove you, little son, in dark red blood two mournful eyes, they painted landscapes with the yellow stitch of conflagrations, they decorated all with hangmen’s trees the flowing oceans. They taught you, little son, to know by heart your land of birth as you were carving out with tears of iron its many paths. They reared you in the darkness and fed you on terror’s bread; you traveled gropingly that shamefulest of human roads. And then you left, my lovely son, with your black gun at midnight, and felt the evil prickling in the sound of each new minute. Before you fell, over the land you raised your hand in blessing. Was it a bullet killed you, son, or was it your heart bursting? March 20, 1944 Elegy on a Polish boy, from: Baczynski, Krzysztof Kamil. White Magic and Other Poems. Bill Johnston translator. Green Integer, 2004.

Warsaw Uprising 1944

Never Forget

I wanted to post appropriate icons for today, but yesterday's madness left a mark, so I'll be over there ----> curled up with Tonio and a Georgette Heyer book I haven't read before. In their stead, in celebration of a certain anniversary, a video I hear is having trouble getting playtime on air...

Oomph! - Gott ist ein Popstar

And, you know, props to Charlie and all, hope he's got a good seat upstairs, and good luck with the beatification thing. Lots of people wearing mourning and little white ribbons on the streets today.

I need a good Charlie W. icon. Possibly with Bono's sunglasses.

Robert Sheckley just died

:(

I need to find a copy of "Bring me the head of Prince Charming".

Simon Wiesenthal dies at age 96

I think I owe myself a re-read of Forsythe's "The Odessa Files". Some things, no-one should forget.

An hour to midnight, and the church was more full than it is on any Sunday except Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. Lots of halleluyahs and concentrating on how to follow his example, which I think is what he would have wanted.

I was six years old, and Mom took me to the flat of her friend from work. We crowded on the tiny balcony and someone held me up. I waved and cheered. Everyone did. I saw the old man in his little white car, slowly driving by just below, and he waved back and smiled at us all. It was kind of like meeting the real Santa, or a third grandfather who lives a long way away but loves you very much.

I read about his other pilgrimages in the papers and saw them on television. I remember the mass he said in his home town of Wadowice, and how he told the people about the cakes he and his friends ate after their high school graduation. I wasn't yet born when he visited Poland the first time as pope and said "May God change the face of the land - this land!", but I profited from that change of the face of the land - from our real freedom and the end of communism.

He was a good man, a kind man. He was the first Pope to enter a synagogue and a mosque. He was the first one to say "we're sorry" to the Jews, too. He proved to us that it can be done, that a human being can be this good and this real and do so much.

I've been a lapsed Catholic since a year after my First Communion, but I took part in Mass tonight, a spontaneous Mass that no-one knew about until fifteen minutes before it started. The church was full.

Goodbye, Karol Wojtyla. You will be sadly missed.

Give Christ my best.

Last night, one of my favorite artists Zdzisław Beksiński was brutally murdered in his apartment, not 500 meters from where I live. His official site's down at the moment, but you can see his dark, oneiric and very beautiful art here, and his photomanipulations here.

His son, one of the best Polish translators of English works (responsible for giving us Monty Python, among others), hanged himself on Christmas 1999 in his apartment, which is a few doors away from mine, on the same floor.

I was just walking past the father's apartment. The windows are dark, haunted.

Rest in peace.

City of menace, like a coffin lid
thrown down an abyss as if
by a tempest's blow –
yet proud
as a black lion who takes long to die

- Krzysztof Kamil Baczynski, Warsaw (translation by Irene P. Coulter)

If there is one thing that gets me by the heart, in fiction and otherwise, it's the dying warrior who still finds the strength for one last attack and lashes out just to HURT, to MATTER. And almost succeeds.

Sixty years ago, a city did this.

August 1st, 1944. The Warsaw Uprising.

Was it a real bullet, son,
or your heart that broke?

- Elegy for a Polish Boy