“Winter Journey” by Barańczak – lyrics

Antennas twixt the grimy chimneys,
the day’s first draught of yellow smoke:
these roofs and dawns are not behind,
but still above us and within us.

The whitest ocean-going liner,
embarking on a distant cruise,
took us, imbued with the aroma
of those murky, cold locations.

Blow, all ye oceanic breezes;
even in our dreams
that place, too well known,
the yellow smoke and blackened snow
still take our breath away.

Blow, all ye oceanic breezes;
even in our dreams
our breath dies:
we know our place only too well,
we know our place
and the yellow teeth of his laughter all too well.

But what if we weren’t destined
at all to rise above
this one, this visible,
this temporary world?
This mediocre world?

Perhaps just growing six feet
above the brittle earth
equates to our ascension?
And only then the grave?

And what if we, our voices still
for three score years and ten,
are singing to these heavens
a rousing, soulful hymn?
a rousing, grateful hymn?

Perhaps the bleak word ‘chilling’,
in wintry poetry,
for ‘thrilling’ and for ‘killing’
would form a proper rhyme?
would form a flawless rhyme?

Underneath the arctic wrapping,
feverish hot sweat runs down.
Something rather out of keeping
with the roguish style of snow –
style that is more cool than hot.

My imagination faltered:
it was such a platitude
that endless frost will dry your throat,
yet a river meets my lips?
Worse than that: it soaks my brain.

Snow, what has become of thee?
A new address, new status, name?
Our fume and smoke, our aerosols:
such trifling things bring so much change?
This conceals some cunning plan.

Do you fear the fate of someone
who has seen too many frosts?
Or, like me, you crave a world
that’s different to what we’ve got?

Or a different you in it.

Into its black kinescope,
the switched-off television
sucks all of our reality
so we might sleep more like a log.
Lighter too reality.

Instantaneous the farewell
spark before the screen falls blank:
Jack-o’-lantern? Wise man’s torch?
Soft the sage is following:

He wants to meet us once at least.
Trail the light into the marshes?
Wait until the gloomy night
reveals to us that dogged truth which
follows at every step?
It is the simplest truth about us:
if it’s known, it’s known to dark.

Upon the shoulder, stood stock still:
a Dodge, its hulking trailer.
Steaming urine perforates
the crystal snow and silence.
‘The menace of a sudden calm…’
those words pursue me still.
The driver rubs his aching back,
supported on the grille.
The driver rubs his aching back,
supported on the grille.

As I fly past beside him now, he’s
standing in suspension.
He copped my swish, my diesel fumes;
an instant, I was with him.
‘And you, why do you mock this void…’
I still see in the mirror,
the white of repercussing hush
absorbs the early twilight,
the white of repercussing hush
absorbs the early twilight.

Clearing snow in the morning,
a logician might say,
accepting two assumptions
contained in the word ‘snow’:
one that the fallen angel
won’t get back whence it fell,
the other that remaining
just complicates the world.

Oh crystal whites together,
exactly half and half,
when finally, oh angel,
one can sprinkle salt
into your wounds!

Oh, pragmatic intentions
so blended half and half
with vindictiveness when, angel,
we sprinkle salt
in your open wounds!

Can somebody be ‘touched with grey’
from one day to the morrow?
Does planet earth get out of sorts
when someone’s head turns speckled?

Metaphor, that iron grip
of lyrically minded pliers,
commits – replacing fact with myth –
a legion of abuses:
half-slips and half-shortcomings.

Our style lets fall a salty tear
of overkill for trifles,
the earth, meanwhile: the crunch of snow
beneath a boot or tyre,
beneath a boot or tyre.

Quality controller jet
draws white lines in the sky.
Earth, have you not had enough?
What more do you require?

You draw for eternity
(putting out a feeler?)
a line that lasts even less
than a sparrow’s faeces.

When Paradise considers
QC jet a reject,
rule yourself out of the show,
evince consistency.

Delete yourself, last a tick:
simple white confession.

Springs and summers, autumns likewise,
come round besides wintertime,
triggering elation
and a suitably melodious rhyme.

So, all told, the wonders and delights
can last through cold and hot:
we plunge our vision’s spoon into
one enormous honey pot.

First revolving leaf of autumn,
ever do you reach my feet,
e’en somebody saves the planet
once,
once,
once with the entreaty ‘Be’,
once,
once,
once with the entreaty ‘Be’.

I flew over cities where millions were sleeping;
I felt out of kilter hunched up by the window:
if on such nights, with a glance, one could tear
the roofs and the sheets from those sleeping below

Ha, if I could… No, no way would I dare:
I know
that then
I would cause offence unto myself,
witnessing
directly
those trivial, anodyne dreams,
those tepid enchantments,
those torpid convulsions,
those insipid terrors.

In each of those sleeping I would have seen
myself, my part and my own allocation,
that to which I am truly entitled,
that which nobody will mythologise.
That to which I am truly entitled –
no, that nobody will mythologise.

And yet when icy winter
blows cold into your skin,
the hope returns, the inkling
you’ve got something within,
you’ve got something within.

Those moments at the bus stop
that seem to last till doom,
those days when mornings bring you
just darkness, snow and gloom,

it’s not a broken contract;
it’s just (though winter’s grim)
the granted grace of contact,
the granted grace of contact
with Something More – with Him.

Dashboard, oh dashboard, with your instruments,
shine bright, like a flute playing in C;
part the night: I assume the role of the drowned,
of a rat, led out of the city.

Frost; spectral drifts along the route;
may your gauges’ light lead us all
across the ice, through the starless night,
may your roaming gauges’ light and
the disc jockey’s warm voice lead us
through starless night, across the ice.

Stationary at a red light,
my eyes drift off to one side.
Parallel four lanes, restrained,
tear off into the night.
Parallel four lanes, restrained,
tear off into the night,
off into the night.

Through the window of the Honda,
in the door the lock is pushed,
in the door the lock is pushed,
blonde locks and a cool left profile:
touching up her lips with gloss,
touching up her lips with gloss.

Yielding to a moment’s coupling
at a silent give way sign,
two remarks we stay within us:
‘So you are here? Well that’s fine’.
Two remarks we stay within us:
‘So you are here, come what may?
Then may you stay’.

In two parallel abysses,
with our gaze reverted back,
we return to falling into
we return to falling into
our own dedicated black.
In two parallel abysses,
with our gaze reverted back,
we return to falling into
our own dedicated black,
our own dedicated black.

Car graveyards full of wreckage,
a rust and metal stew,
the stench of urban refuse,
a lonely greenhouse roof,

plain wire allotment fences,
some mutt kicks up a din,
soot-covered shop-floor buildings,
the smoke of cinder bins,

a cable’s drooping bracket,
and there, for clouds and hush,
skyscrapingly unfathomed,
a soaring utterance,

from midst the blackened snowfall,
somebody’s – who knows whose? –
crosier, rod or shepherd’s staff
ascends to heaven’s blue.

Crosier, rod or shepherd’s staff
ascends to heaven’s blue.

Just for once, in the snow,
one might seek retribution,
countering the squalling white
with fierce insurrection.

One more swathe of frost and ice,
whites of flatlands sweeping?
Rather unrelenting, Lord,
Your graces I’m refusing.

Lethal ice and crunching snow,
just another blizzard:
I’ll seek my own cataclysms,
yours are too familiar.

This is no baptism of fire,
scouting trip or recce:
long I’ve known, Lord, what is this
emptiness inside me.

When neon signs light up our face,
show magnanimity; don’t tease.

When tumult hides the fear in us,
at least know of our reveries.

When hatred tarnishes our face,
bring us a mirror, bid us see.

When truth’s contradictions bore us,
save us from simplicity.

When we are struggling with our choice
of words, discern our real voice.

Standing by a window, suddenly I see,
in its dull reflection: someone just like me!
Just the spitting image, no real difference,
were it not that wrinkled, wizened countenance,
caught upon the threshold of grey eminence.

Wired-up tiny earphones, so he’s got, I see,
music in his pocket – just the same as me.
I could place a wager, with no strings or traps,
that his CD’s playing anything but rap;
Schubert’s much more likely, just that kind of chap.

So it’s true, my brother, truly we can see:
I have got a you here, and you’ve got a me?