It has been three years since the yellow flames of October leaves gave way to November’s Light of Remembrance, which brightens your way, my dearest Ewunia: there and back, from heart to heart, day after day, an endless journey. But November does not have to remind us of you, because in the symbolic Garden of Presence – mysterious and beautiful like you, created here for you – countless evergreen buds of flames glow all year round – in spite of everything that is not faith, hope nor love. They shimmer and blossom with light whenever your name appears in our thoughts or in conversation.
One might instinctively write that it has been another year without you, but you are still here, only in a different way, and this difference is like a new language that each of us is trying to learn at their own pace and according to personal sensitivity. You have certainly mastered it to perfection, because that is who you are. YOU ARE, because you would never leave anyone. Always discreetly, “with great quietness”, you spread your wings of care and attention over those close to you, wanting to keep up with every melody of existence and not miss a single note. And once someone has noticed you, they will never lose their sight of you, because they know how to look.
The bird videos you used to send like balm onto our aching hearts have become birds that you probably now guide yourself whenever you sense some sadness to be soo-ooh-thed with chirping. I swear, our beloved long-tailed tits seem to chirp with a British accent, as if they had just returned from your English language classes. There are probably no birds that better reflect your gentle nature and the magic of conversations with you – when successive threads, digressions, impressions, wisdom, enchantment and jokes gather together in this interpersonal sparkle, feverishly and en masse, in an unstoppable rush of resonance, touching and cheering up everything around them. Like those flocks of long-tailed tits – miniature bird-angels through which you make yourself present.
Your smile still brings joy to others’ faces when Kuba and I turn the hearts’ speakerphone on and play our “best of” compilations – long-playing memories of what always made us laugh until we cried or brought tears of emotion to our eyes. And together we create new memories, because we know very well what would make you laugh and what would touch the most sensitive strings in your soul. As we write in our Books of Days, we leave extra spacing lines for you to fill in. After all, our first meeting took place in the “Między Słowami” [Between Words] café. And between the words, I can clearly see you in the smiles of your wonderful Parents, whom I am lucky enough to hug every few months. You can be sure that I will do everything to keep that smile there and that I am as determined as Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who “made Meryl laugh”.
I still find – on my daily paths and journeys – all sorts of objects that fall into the sight’s embrace in solemn moments or with a silent cry for solace. So often they seem to refer to thoughts entrusted in silence only to you, that they no longer surprise me, but move me a hundredfold. It is impossible not to feel the touch of your presence in all these pendants in the shape of a heart, half a heart, an angel’s wing, a fairy, a crocheted “Worry Worm”… It is impossible not to smile through tears when looking at the bracelet with the English inscription “your smile makes me happy” – found along with a previously lost smile.
I still hear your beloved ABBA: on the radio in Bródno, when I buy you a rose, at the Pergola in Wrocław, when the singing fountain resounds with the meaningful “Mamma mia” right after I put a bookmark with a description of your books in a bookcrossing booth, or finally at night in Haworth, when I sit with my Mum on a bench dedicated to you [link], and in the pub opposite someone starts singing “Waterloo” and other hits. Then I become certain that you are well there. And that you would like to share all of this with us.
I could conjugate your “I am” in so many cases, persons, and tenses, but there are situations in which I feel it particularly intensely: when my thoughts, words, and gestures take on shades of your gentleness, patience, and understanding, when I wonder what you would think and do if you were me, and then I give way to you for a moment. And in that moment, the world softens and becomes a better place thanks to you.
Your books – like the murmurations of starlings – circulate around the world, spreading their wings in beautiful reviews [link, link], and the thoughts about you evoked by reading them take on various forms and become the spark of extraordinary interactions. People who has got to know you – thanks to those books and our stories – only after you set off on your longest journey, now write about you as a Friend and remain in close contact with us. I can’t wait to tell you how you touched the heart of our beloved Australian artist of words and sound, Louisa John-Krol, whose touching letters give us wings, because you have probably long since grown feathers like a swallow! Thanks to Monika, your books are reaching the farthest corners of the world (one of the photos in the gallery is Painted Ladies Free Little Library in San Francisco), because you have become an inseparable companion on her journey. With Kuba, we reached a place, you dreamed of visiting: Leo’s Tavern in Ireland. We left books and a letter addressed to Moya Brennan there. In early spring this year, when Wordsworth’s daffodils were still in bloom, I took you to places that just couldn’t be without you: Hay-on-Wye in Wales and enchanted Glastonbury. The photo shows the tears of tenderness of the antiquarian bookseller, who accepted both your books with emotion and gratitude. “Now she is here with us,” she said about you when I mentioned how much you loved Wales. Another photograph shows the smile of a librarian from the Library of Avalon in Glastonbury, an Irish woman who could not take her eyes off The Arthurian Legend…. I also left a copy of this book in a unique room adjacent to St Margaret’s Chapel (Glastonbury) – a place of prayer and meditation with a rich library. When I returned there after a few months, the book looked as if it had passed through dozens of hands. And dozens of hearts.
Yet these are all stories for separate entries, shimmering with so many shades of meaning and emotion that even a rainbow could not encompass them all, unless it was a misty one, which you have already gifted me with twice. Now, let me just thank all the heroes and heroines of these (un)written stories, thanks to whom your Garden of Presence continues to flourish. In gratitude, I am enclosing a scanned fragment of your handwritten notes, which your Parents gave me. I spotted a word there that sounds like the most beautiful gift:
Speaking of gardens… Years ago, you wrote a beautiful article [link] about the ghostly gardens of William Morris and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Of these two poignant visions juxtaposed with each other, only one seemed to offer hope. That is why this excerpt from Morris’s poem appears as the motto in the description of this page, and let the entire work be heard for the first time in Polish now – for you, and for everyone who would like to spend time in the Garden of Presence with you today:
William Morris
OGRÓD NAD MORZEM | Ewie (transl. by MS)
Znam pewien ogród z dawna już
Gęsty od lilii i od róż,
Gdzie chciałbym błądzić całe dnie
Od rannych ros po dżdżysty zmierzch,
Nie będąc w owym miejscu sam.
Choć wszystkie ptaki milkną tam,
Choć tam nie stoi żaden dom,
Choć od owoców, kwiatów są
Jabłonie wolne, Boże, spraw,
By stopy jej dotknęły traw,
A wzrok mój ku nim znowu biegł.
I wtem dobiega, ale szept
Znad brzegu, gdzie strumieni dwóch
Ślad miesza się z purpurą wzgórz,
Płynąc w burzliwą morską toń:
Wzgórz ciemnych, gdzie pszczół nie zna wrzos,
A brzegu statkiem nie tknął nikt,
Dokoła zieleń wód się tli,
Co niesie szept udręką fal
W miejsce, za którym cicho łkam.
Za którym łkam co noc i dzień,
A słodycz chwil odrzucam precz,
Odwracam wzrok, przytępiam słuch,
Nie walczę i tracę co rusz
To, o czym człek od wieków śni.
Choć słabym jest, a chód mój drży,
Tchu jeszcze krztynę w sobie mam,
By w paszczy śmierci szukać bram
Do miejsca, które szczęściem zwę,
A ono twarz ma tylko jej,
Od ust odjętą mi przez los
Tam, skąd dobiega morza głos.
William Morris
A GARDEN BY THE SEA
I KNOW a little garden-close,
Set thick with lily and red rose,
Where I would wander if I might
From dewy morn to dewy night,
And have one with me wandering.
And though within it no birds sing,
And though no pillared house is there,
And though the apple-boughs are bare
Of fruit and blossom, would to God
Her feet upon the green grass trod,
And I beheld them as before.
There comes a murmur from the shore,
And in the close two fair-streams are,
Drawn from the purple hills afar,
Drawn down unto the restless sea:
Dark hills whose heath-bloom feeds no bee,
Dark shore no ship has ever seen,
Tormented by the billows green
Whose murmur comes unceasingly
Unto the place for which I cry.
For which I cry both day and night,
For which I let slip all delight,
Whereby I grow both deaf and blind,
Careless to win, unskilled to find,
And quick to lose what all men seek.
Yet tottering as I am and weak,
Still have I left a little breath
To seek within the jaws of death
An entrance to that happy place,
To seek the unforgotten face,
Once seen, once kissed, once reft from me
Anigh the murmuring of the sea.
Blog post translated by J. Niedziela