In a Warm Bed (An Alba) by Tomasz Różycki

In a Warm Bed  (An Alba)

 

In a warm bed, the minute just before dawn.

A blackbird has woken up and is tracing

a figure eight outside the window. Below

the sound again of unknown hoodlums breaking

a car mirror, compact fragments of the sky

and city lying there. Only the blackbird

sounds the alarm. In a minute, we must rise

and put on for the world some sort of disguise.

 

But not just yet. In a minute, dawn will show

to slash the window curtains with its sharp sword

and catch us, warm, in flagrante delicto.

In just a minute. As yet the world is shard

by shard still affixing faces – so and so 

in a broken mirror. Variants grow hard

and harder, solidify, the world recast

wavers a bit before putting on the last.

(Translated by Mira Rosenthal)