Maja Trochimczyk is a poet, music historian, photographer and translator born in Poland, educated in Warsaw and Montreal (Ph.D., McGill ’94), and living in California (www.trochimczyk.net). She published four books on music (on Chopin, Polish dance, Romanticism, and Louis Andriessen), two volumes of poetry (Rose Always and Miriam’s Iris), and two anthologies (Chopin with Cherries and Meditations on Divine Names). Hundreds of her articles and po- ems appeared in English, Polish, as well as German, French, Chinese, Spanish and Serbian translations. She taught music history at USC and ethics in jail. The Sixth Poet-Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga and the Senior Director of Plan- ning at Phoenix House, she currently serves as President of Moonrise Press, and Board Member of the Polish American Historical Association.
Winter 2012
Table of Contents - Vol. VIII, No. 4
Poetry Translations Fiction Non-fiction Reviews
Maja Trochimczyk
A Visit to Gdansk Oliwa, August 1969
My mother’s aunt, Ciocia Jadzia works in a kiosk in Oliwa
Selling papers and razor blades in a ruined city
Of charcoal buildings and five-year plans
She hides the best blades for her faithful clients
In the kiosk on the way to the Cathedral
Where angels with puffy wooden cheeks
Triumphantly blow their golden trumpets
Walls and benches shake with the majesty of Bach
The gold-starred ceiling shimmers
In summer evening cold
The music of my seaside vacation heals the grey hours
Of sitting in the kiosk, selling matches and tickets
After Ciocia Jadzia goes home to cook dinner
For her silent husband, drunk artist son
She works – Uncle Dominic, a proud nobleman
In a top hat and a black Sunday coat
Walks through Oliwa’s parks
With his last, prize-winning Holstein cow
Grieving the loss of his estates – the life he had had
Before that fateful train ride from the East
He still sees the red-roofed manor with a white porch
Bronze oak leaves scattered on the gravel path
Silver gray of Lake Switez
Golden rye fields before the harvest
He walks home to rusty bricks pocked by bullet holes,
Smoke-dark hallways, and a burst of color
In the courtyard where asters tremble
Like a bouquet of fallen stars
He has the sadness of the damned in his eyes
The left eye, emptied of heartsease
The right, clouded with despair
Thick lines on his cheeks point downward
A snarling rictus of lips, once moistened with kisses
“There is no hope,” he thinks, “none ever”
What would you expect? He said “No” every time
Except when denial was healthy – the virus
Multiplied in his veins, pocked his grief-stricken face
Rejections do this to you, so does contempt
He said, “Not in a thousand years, don’t even dream”
And he stopped dreaming – to die slowly
In a refusal to breathe in the light, drink wisdom
From a goblet of fire, studded with diamonds
Of kindness, luminous outpouring of grace
© Maja Trochimczyk
