My Life

My Life

Is made of the banging
Shock-absorbers
And hydrosulphuric stench,
And the boiling, stinking, panting
Factory line

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Is made of the banging
Shock-absorbers
And hydrosulphuric stench,
And the boiling, stinking, panting
Factory line

Day and night
Lamplights
Always flicker out there

Every day! Fog and gloom.
The labor is stretched
To breaking, expectations
Are extended.
Dreams go undreamed.

Cemetery days.
One after the other.
White caskets, the planks
Of our bunks
Await our thoughts
That grow ill in this hateful prison block.

(translated from the Polish by Fanny Howe and Arie Galles)

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