The Son of the Wall

The Christian cannot be the pitying one because he is the one pitied. From a dusty road in a straight line from przedmiescie to Krasnystaw at the entrance to town at Zhitkovski's in his house we lived, he makes coffins with crosses. On the threshold I sat as a boy opposite a building held together by nails facing the church the cloister the impurity, my mother says, I sat as a boy. On the wall Jesus and Mary. Jesus and his mother were never parted. My mother's son left her not to be on the wall. Mary's son never left, and he paid the price. —October 26-29, 1989