In the West I would undoubtedly have been a ‘writer of dark things’, the kind that sounds the horn of pessimism, predicts the end of Europe, the senselessness of human endeavour and of the whole evolution of our species. Here, in this intellectual and economic wreckage, I blow the trumpet of morality and the meaningfulness of our existence.
[Zygmunt Mycielski]

drips, thick,
rustles dry in the ivy like many small animals foraging.
Behind a doorway,
piano music starts, a song I know;
then stops one note before the crest
of the arpeggio. Why does it feel
as though someone I love is dying?
Nothing has happened here beyond the strangeness
of another night on earth, sunset swallowed
by this opaque sky, and from somewhere above,
the questioning assurances
of geese—you there? you there? I’m here—
you there—