Furtianie

Anna Piwkowska, as the guardian of a garden gate, lets her beloved ones in, as well as her pebbles, animals and roses. The gate that she guards divides two worlds – both fascinating and filled with mystery. On one side, there is a familiar earthly garden; and on the other side, a heavenly one, or Czeslaw Miłosz’s so-called “second space”, which Piwkowska recalls in the inscription to her second volume of Gateguardians. Her poems are the entrance within the gate, needed in order to contain everyone recollected by her; each one in an extreme state of vanishing. T.S. Eliot’s quote, which opens the first volume, encourages us to bridge the invisible border between these two spheres of differing orders: “Other echoes / Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?” No doubt this collection of poems answers “yes” to Eliot’s question.

As we read, we discover that not only the author – with her power over words – is the guardian of the garden gate, but we are too. “Lonely gateguardians we shield this speck of our land – / we pick up a pebble, cover the roses” (“Gateguardians”). By fulfilling this obligation, stated in the quote, we realise that each of us carries a metaphysical wall with an opening and closing gate, dividing life from death, a continual birthing from dying. In her poem “DNA”, Piwkowska asks: “How much love and death is written in our DNA? Who knows what DNA really is.”

A poet such as Piwkowska is willing, with the utmost commitment, to “love what’s mortal” (“Photos from Ciche”) and, with each of her lines, tenderly embraces her characters and personae so they don’t feel lonely in their experiences of mortality. Just to provide an example: “A girl with hair like a bird’s down, lying between chamomile flowers in a quiet meadow in Ciche.” Who finds herself in this girl? Perhaps Janka or Ludwiga from a photo, or the poet herself, or a reader? What’s crucial is that after reading these poems, we acquire certainty that we will meet this frail creature on the other side of the gate. For this, we should be grateful to Anna Piwkowska, a master of intergalactic longing.