BY THE BUG'S BLUE WATER

The words I don't know
Are unspoken in an accent
That marks me as a native
Lost,stolen or strayed
From Kamianka Strumilowa
A small town, itself now hiding
Under a new name
On the banks of the River Bug.

WHY I WASN'T ANSWERING MY PHONE YESTERDAY

Sometimes I am reassembled in haste
And, having gone to sleep a Polish Jew,
I awake a Jewish Pole, spending the day
Half in many-named Lemberg, around 1900
Reciting on the banks of the River Bug
The names of poets then unborn. I still
Know no Polish but it is a pleasure
Just to hear me pronounce Czeslaw Milosz,
Wislawa Szymborska, Tadeusz Rozewicz.