Here, young stranger, a speckled egg
of Carpathian granite, blooming with crystal,
stolen in my youth from the womb
of a Moldavian stream, said the old Gypsy
when he handed the riverstone to me.
Mill it—down to flour.
Fertilize it with this old man’s ash,
carry the meal up to Ram Mountain
and cast it out there. Like the Roma,
let the rain wash it to the Odra and the Wisła,
let that blend of stone and man
leaven the two waters
with the ashes of my love
and the soul of my mountains.
Let it ride the Wisła east, the Odra west,
Down through Silesia, past Krakow’s poet-tomb;
May it seal the wounds of my people,
Prussian and Pole, Czech and Jew—
children of the two veins together;
our dark blood never spill again
even to where the twin rivers spill
upon the northern sea.
After discovering that a town in Upper Silesia (southern Poland) shared its name with my daughter Brenna, and from thence having wandered in my imagination across that countryside, this little vision appeared. “Brennica” is the little stream that flows through the village of Brenna. Czeslaw Milosz and other notable poets are buried in Krakow downstream. The general intent is to depict a man who seeks to unify Poland as soil (rather than ethnicity) with his ashes.