Przypowieść na własne 44. urodziny [English translation]

Pioneer of gutters, gutterings, cornices, rooftops

Well travelled in palaces, fluffy beds

To myself a secret, pride, and terror

To nobody owing mercy or respect

I step thoroughly through shadowy troughs of night

I look through windows, into the glass books of light

I comprehend insomnia – bastard of insomnia's

when – like it or not – someone else's takes me for a witness

No use out of me here: I’m battling through the night

I – Le Diable boiteux, I – a March raunchy tomcat

behind his desk, a politician’s blacking out the papers

so thickly, he can’t even tell when he lies

into ecstasy turned agony, with mere words

insomnia of ambition lulling his memories

the window suggests an elevated reflection

In halo of fur glowing eyes’ fountain

'Look at me! I don't sleep so you may lie in lethargy.

‘without me, ye ungrateful, meet the bottom line!'

No use for me here: I have pride of my own

and conceited passion at odds with reason

A banker sic —ing cigar's smoke against slumber

He's planning tomorrow's merciful cut

that will let all the blood out of a partner

bringing a mutually beneficial venture to its extent

He sights the lame creature in the window

and teases old unused conscience:

'Victory likes silence. Failure likes the crowd.

Herring likes onion, and money – wordlessness'

No use for me here: I have my own turf

where the world is all viscera and graft

Sleepless author longing hugs a phial

As if the spirits could lend him spirit

Words once great became trivial

even yelled out fall completely mute

Pigeons sleep in nests made of their own soil

moonlike reflection of swaying head of a cat

he dreamed of freedom and he is given leeway

so as to take away remnats of faith and prospect

No use for me here: I have my own glooms

and my own loneliness that never adjourns

Behind this window, a pair is mating furiously.

gasping silence not to disturb children’s sleep

just behind the door - a litter of four sleeping cuddly

She's determined to last, he's enduring the lust

And they pray, they pray to be more wealthy

Trusting shadows more than they trust each other

They're praying to God, so he pulls them out of poverty

For misery lives off lust, like life lives off love

No use for me here: when I get horny

I think of nothing, I seek no God.

And here! This window – Death lives all alone

feeding on remnants of joys and guilt

Noiselessly past this one I shamble

before merciful oblivion embraces [me]

First day of Spring spewed me in convulsion

writhing in instincts and senses

To catress I annouce my yowling proclaimation

I warn a cat with a hateful hiss

Myself I was a god! The oracle to mankind

Envoy of witches, clever cat Behemoth

now – lines of my borders – I mark with nasty broth

for my existences so many, for the score I care not

what, when, why, where, how much and what for

uncessant battles of inedaquacies spectator