Skip to main content

Polish, Math

By Krystyna Dąbrowska

Prove that a person
is / is not
the smithy of his fate.
Topic of an assigned essay
I wrote for my brother.
He did math homework for me,
the smithy of my fate
in the hard sciences.
And I forged for him
a C in Polish class.
A difficult art: to write at best
a B essay, so as not to arouse suspicion.
While he had to figure out
how to drop in artful errors
on my homework.
Only now do I see
this was a form of empathy,
the only one between us,
siblings in a state of war,
forced to share a room
in an apartment block’s small flat.
In numbers my brother
found his realm. And I in words.
Only here, being ourselves,
we grew beyond ourselves—
he impersonated me,
his dim kid sister,
where he’d master the obstacle course
of my graph notepad,
though for his brain
it was hardly an obstacle.
I learned his foreign-
for-me language
and came to write him, not myself.
Graph notepad, loose-leaf in lines.
Prove that I am someone else.
Let me, another, cast lots.

Translated from the Polish

Poet Bio

A woman with short grey hair sitting on a bench outside a historic building. She is wearing a powder pink scarf and turquoise blue

Krystyna Dąbrowska is a Polish poet, essayist, and translator. She is the author of Ścieżki dźwiękowe (“Soundtracks,” Wydawnictwo a5, 2018), Czas i przesłona (“Time and Aperture,” Znak, 2014), Białe krzesła (“White Chairs,” WBPiCAK, 2012), and Biuro podróży (“Travel Agency,” Zielona Sowa Publishing, 2006).

See More By This Poet

More Poems About Living

A Wyandot Cradle Song

By Bertrand N. O. Walker

Hush thee and sleep, little one, 
     The feathers on thy board sway to and fro; 
The shadows reach far downward in the water 
     The great old owl is waking, day will go. 

Rest thee and fear not, little one, 
     Flitting fireflies come to light you on your way 
To the fair land of dreams, while in the grasses 
     The happy cricket chirps his merry lay. 

Tsa-du-meh watches always o’er her little one, 
     The great owl cannot harm you, slumber on 
’Till the pale light comes shooting from the eastward, 
     And the twitter of the birds says night has gone.

  • Living
  • The Mind

Whose Mouth Do I Speak With

By Suzanne S. Rancourt

I can remember my father bringing home spruce gum.
He worked in the woods and filled his pockets
with golden chunks of pitch.
For his children
he provided this special sacrament
and we’d gather at this feet, around his legs,
bumping his lunchbox, and his empty thermos rattled inside.
Our skin would stick to Daddy's gluey clothing
and we’d smell like Mumma's Pine Sol.
We had no money for store bought gum
but that’s all right.
The spruce gum
was so close to chewing amber
as though in our mouths we held the eyes of Coyote
and how many other children had fathers
that placed on their innocent, anxious tongue
the blood of tree?

  • Nature
  • Living
  • Relationships