when already in his mind
he'd dusted himself off like a rooster
run down the hotel stairs
gotten on the train
to quickly
escape from her
to where the black pepper grows
she, snuggling up to
him with both eyes firmly closed
had already built with them
a house
smelling of dinner
and fresh children
to which he'd just come running
up the stairs
(in reality
he and she had slept
together for the first time
and lying
keep silent about this precisely
in two foreign
mutually unknown
languages)
My translation of Polish poet Józef Baran's "On i ona"
