In the summer of 1987 I left Poland. The country was fragmented; political anarchy combined with economic crisis didn’t give us any hope for affluent nor interesting life. The political struggle was exciting for those who were actively engaged in it, either by chance or by lacking other skills. For others it meant never-ending existential sufferings. Depressive atmosphere of uncertainty and even hostility was contagious. I had only one life and I didn’t want to threw it “on the rampart”. Against the Germans, maybe, but on the both side of the barricade I saw only Poles. This fight, as we all know, is still taking place, even in 2015.
I accepted an invitation to participate in one-month internship at the Rotterdam clinic, being my passageway to the West. Soon my wife took my daughter to a pretended trip to Spain and joined me. We met in Belgium and we asked for political asylum there.
Our request was rejected and we ended up in Germany due to our origin. Grandfather Franz got an iron cross during WWI So we were granted permanent residence in FRG (before reunification with GDR).
I returned to Poland in 2012. I had several reasons to do so: my family fell apart due to tragic events, I suffered a mental shock and, thus, I overvalued many things in my life. At the same time Europe witnessed great and unexpected changes: the fall of the Berlin Wall, reunification of Germany, political transformation in Poland. And finally… I fell in love – in Poland!
But above all there was this unfulfilled dream of being a writer. There was a time when I thought I could write in German. However, reality made me soon realize that it was too late for me, that I was born and I will die with Polish language on my lips. So why not get back to its sources!
Feliks decided to collect his experiences in a piece titled “Emigration étude” comprising the following poems.
The Fall
Every wind is good for a sailor without a harbour
Unknown
vibrating country carcass was savaged
to revive the cross and a tombac crown
i was made wait thirty years for a flat
with the wife that's so young and so goddamn hot
the country stank with hypocrisy for a mile
i did not want to wipe my ass with blotting paper
the legacy was destroyed justifying the means
either you're with the revolution or fuck off
but a poet does not prove himself in rebellions
where unanimity is the force behind the human cart
i preferred under a tense question mark
sailing by myself behind the horizontal arc
i left divided against my inhospitable mother
to wait out her forced prostitution
and not to see pretty witches being burnt
lighting up the dullness of the iron curtain
Stranger among the generous
In my experience with myself I have enough
to make me wise, if I were only a good student of it.
Michel de Montaigne, French philosopher
Everything was supposed to be gold there
and the heart would still trace adventure
when fingerprints were taken off his fingers
and it started as usual... on the street
a procedure he was, a register item
a substitute of freedom full face and in profile
with light luggage at numerous doors of the world
a free electron with physics at the back
teeth were not counted in embassy lobbies
right beliefs were more important
so he bent the truth with self-repulsion bow
to please the free world
all for nothing, though a white male with a diploma
flexible neck and bendy spine
but without views indispensable here and now
only a body at a slave fair
then grandfather flashed with a hostile kreuz from afterlife
honour and fatherland lost their sharpness a bit
only God remained, guard of artistic values
when he made Versöhnung under the "enemy"'s roof
and profaned his throat with a disgraceful tongue.
drilling a gloomy corridor in his conscience
and it seems that the erected walls of hatred
fell together in Berlin and in him
he'd be sending letters to Poland, with no bits yet
listening to the echo of chaos across the roof
to a drip of comfort stubborn like stalagmite
waiting and deluding those who felt
that the bond was getting slack, despite some consoling words
at night sadness would flow out of half-open eyelids
the wind of history stripped down illusions: our people there
less and less Polish, out came... the man!
waded across humility and felt satiety
with quiet contempt covered the past
grew allochtoon in the garden of abundance
with a solid root, or just a... rootlet?
teased the hosts with obsession of feelings
missed an unnamed defect
they watched reproachfully how ungrateful he was
the seam was hardening with a mutual scar
they were friendly at times, with proper distance
he was sensitive, excessively brave
craving for friendship, but they were... hospitable
and still, never fully secure
already commanding his defiant words well
even went to discover beauty in hateful speech
but still he suffered late with accurate thought
for he was tide in speech, yet somehow lifeless
they pointed him with a finger: a Pole
and he defended, amazed with himself
when stereotype put its fingers to him
when he was asked repeatedly: what are they like?
and so he is them, though he changed his passport
and put so much effort in mimicry
who was he then, will they always
be the only proper clarification for him?
and finally once someone spit in his face with hatred
with a name as shameful as his own
he felt pity waiting for him with a knife
he had to suffer, there were two people inside him too
Oda do An Ode to a Gutterrynny
Once I used to think I had run into the world
from the darkness of chaos elusive and free from my fate.
'Defeat', Bolesław Leśmian
i came back carefully, unnoticed
walked around the yard, twisted carpet hanger
i hugged the gutter, my route to freedom
and many much harder returns home
I pierced through the depth of a dark window pane with my eyes
the look was deflected with an empty well echo
deprived of the spring i once used to be
then a voice behind my back: nobody lives here any more...
I returned to hum: Prostitutes at the grave
nobody will admit that one nowadays
pure Aryan rules the motherland
now just a country for selected ones
they prefer certain graves here over worse
nobody's sure, not even under the ground
i'll deny my parents three times before dawn
cursed are those who died and did not erase all traces
Poland is a stamp, a stigma inscribed in soul
a no-place on Earth - sometimes less, sometimes more
it's a burden carried around the map of the world
a childhood injury, an instilled difference
either you don't return here, or you do return despite
for Poland is more than a country on Vistula
bigos and weeping willows around
Poland is... an unrelenting state of mind!
Tu be or nicht zu sein…
What the caterpillar calls the end,
the rest of the world calls a
butterfly Laotse
They walk fake, half absent-minded
ready for tasks that went by long ago
a stake in their hearts and a clove of garlic
for the puppets on broken strings
cause the herd formed a tight line
stay in the waiting room or hide in a museum
with a yellowish photo and necrosis of memories
you're no longer from here, a handful of dry leaves
that circulated for too long, carried by the wind
to find the logging which over that spring
fed their buds and green anxiety
careless enough to abandon the roots
You threw an excess of seed on a foreign soil
thinking you multiplied common property
now you're wiping your eye in disbelief
for janissaries grow instead of children
you're swollen with knowledge, but so very late
do not rely on hearing of breathless generations
they will leave you in the hallway by courtesy
to the second life from gigazeroes and gigaones
A Supervalue Concept
To be a patriot means to love your
country in spite of the patriots
Gerhard Kocher, Swiss political scientist
remember when patriotism prides out of your chest
that somebody's dying for his on your bayonet
so memory and glory don't be sure to get
for like a bad shilling come back those falsely cursed
don't rely on dying gallantly
offering your empty head to sabre blows
but rather in a quiet tidy room
a tiny joystick will move by a dose
you won't have time to scream: for my country!
or look at your wife before spirit leaves
you'll disappear mingled with billions of atoms
and God will make better creations than you and your enemy
so before you send someone a byte of death
in a game of appearances with no fear
think well whether somebody in that room
does not have faster processors than here
they want you to bend amicably like spikes
and you to be a knapweed or a red poppy
a weed, then, if hunger looks into your mouth
but those who are full will decorate their house with it
