An Ode to Entanglement & Modigliani Suite

Ode to Hands
(written by Halina Poświatowska, translated by Anna Gąsienica-Byrcyn)


Greetings to you my palms, my grasping fingers, and my finger smashed by the car door. My X-rayed palm looks like a sprained wing, like a tiny piece of bone drawn by its own contour. My left hand's ring finger once decorated by a band is widowed now, deprived of its adornment. The one who gave me the ring long since has no fingers. His arms are woven with the tree's roots into one.

My hands have so often touched the frozen palms of the dead, and the warm, strong palms of the living. They know how to caress unusually by touch losing the space that separates existence from existence, and heaven from earth. My hands knowing the pain of helplessness cling to each other like two frightened birds, homeless, blindly seeking everywhere the trace of your hands.

the body of my garden
woven from the living and painful branches
cries at night
recalling the down of birds' wings
the moon's face wet among the leaves
it peers into a nest full of absence
the green fingers quiver
clenched in the throat of the wind
dawn

the seeing fingers dance
on black and white keys
I greet them with my breath
with my hand I touch the lips
with my smile I bring to life
the colors and I use the most beautiful of them
to write in red blood: myself

in our eternal departures
on outstretched wings
we are ever closer
to each other and earth

you are my hand
I am your hair
and that shadow behind us
is neither this nor that

the shadow—our united lips enclosing
all-
embracing
both love and death

I broke off the bough of love
I buried it in the earth
and look
my garden has blossomed

one cannot kill love
if you bury it in the earth
it grows back
if you toss it into the air
it grows leaf-like wings
dropped into the water

it flashes with gills
immersed in the night
it shines

so I wanted to bury it in my heart
but my heart was home to my love
my heart opened its heart's door
and it rang out with song from wall to wall
my heart danced on my fingertips

so I buried my love in my head
and people asked
why my head has blossomed
why my eyes shine star-like
and why my lips are brighter than the dawn

I wanted to tear this love to pieces
but it was supple it entangled my hands
and my hands are bound with love
people ask whose prisoner I am 

*To read more of Poświatowska's poetry, visit here.

Georgia O'Keeffe — Hands, 1919
Alfred Stieglitz (American, Hobokan, New Jersey, 1864-1946 New York)
via The Metropolitan Museum of Art