Polish, Math
Translated By Karen Kovacik
Prove that a person
is / is not
the smithy of his fate.
Topic of an assigned essay
I wrote for my brother.
He did math homework for me,
the smithy of my fate
in the hard sciences.
And I forged for him
a C in Polish class.
A difficult art: to write at best
a B essay, so as not to arouse suspicion.
While he had to figure out
how to drop in artful errors
on my homework.
Only now do I see
this was a form of empathy,
the only one between us,
siblings in a state of war,
forced to share a room
in an apartment block’s small flat.
In numbers my brother
found his realm. And I in words.
Only here, being ourselves,
we grew beyond ourselves—
he impersonated me,
his dim kid sister,
where he’d master the obstacle course
of my graph notepad,
though for his brain
it was hardly an obstacle.
I learned his foreign-
for-me language
and came to write him, not myself.
Graph notepad, loose-leaf in lines.
Prove that I am someone else.
Let me, another, cast lots.
Translated from the Polish
Notes:
Read the Polish-language original by Krystyna Dąbrowska, “Polski, matematyka.”
Source: Poetry (September 2022)