Railroad Amsterdam to Katowice

via Berlin & Wroclaw. Longest day.

Sinister train sounds in the vast November

black. Bloodlands. Forgot

to change money, hungry all the way.

​

My brother’d said Keep your wits about you the popular thing

now is to chloroform tourists, if you’re not careful

you’ll wake up naked in St Petersburg. Also be careful

you don’t get off at the wrong stop, beware North Katowice, New Katowice,

Central Katowice, Old Katowice.

​

An ugly drunk in the final compartment browbeats

everybody, bellows, plays shit music

on his shit cassette player. I creep

carefully into the corridor. Open

the window. Mingle my breath with the rushing dark.

​

Fall out at the final station hungry thirsty tired

& there he is on the steps. My little brother. Smiling.

In his high-ceilinged apartment he makes dinner,

makes tea, plays Dylan’s Up To Me.

My first time. We sit smoking, bent to the music.

​

Two days later an ex-nun drives us to Auschwitz.

Brick chimneys in Birkenau’s bleak plain. Polish skies.

All of it. My smallness. And the weather

is awful. I read later that’s what

everybody says. It’s always awful there.

​

Krakow. In the square St Mary’s trumpet call’s cut off

by a Mongol arrow in 1241. Photo of

my brother & me & the dragon Smock Wawelski.

On the train back to Berlin a man looks exactly

like my father, right down to the sweater.

​

Stan: your father from Kurki, your mother

from Suchowola. Where? Villages

with both names all over Poland.

More mystery & gap. Your erasure

accelerating. My loss getting bigger.

​

You went to Poland as a kid on a trip

& didn’t want to go back to Canada.

Told your mom your dad would get over

you eventually. This is where you come from.

Where it started. And I myself am not over you.