Stare Miasto

Your voices, quick and
choppy
contrast with the minute violinist,
over the unending stage of this musical city;
the colors of autumn and the wood of the violin,
glow in this summer's end-
everything, dyed in red and joy, waves to the sun,
a friend preparing to travel far, to lands of the south;
colorful and with affliction you mistune with your center,

scrappy between glasses of this technological century
and pale rectangles, the least saddened a blueish gray,
its windows, without zest to talk,
admire yours: ancient, sheltered
under roof tiles smelling of chimney and ovens full of pierogis.

Your european character, wondering streets and gossip
hides between these plazas,
intimate with these walls,
that have survived all and without silence chose to teach us,
between the chords of a tone-deaf violin.