but now
scrappy news
about your life
I only learn accidentally from mutual friends
when they are gossiping
about everything about everybody
often now I go calling on people
on stupid pretexts
some examples of which being books
lectures
borrowing and returning
things I don’t need
scrappy news about my life
you can learn for example
from this stuff I’m writing
but it’s all invented
and so I dread the picture
you have formed of me
I have never concealed anything from you
except for one single thing
the last time I saw you home
at night through deserted Smíchov
on the long street uphill
I saw through the window of a basement flat
a hanged man
and you didn’t
thanks to your small stature
it was an old man
every time I saw you home at night
his light was on
perhaps he was reading
or drinking
or crying
now he was hanging from the ceiling
feet off the floor
about the height of a chair
I couldn’t see his face
his back was turned towards me
you were talking about something life or death
and were angry that I hadn’t been listening to you
the hanged man didn’t hear you either
I pretended I was lighting a cigarette
to convince myself
but he was still hanging there unmoving dead
we walked along
because you wouldn’t have believed me and would have wanted to see him
I would have had to lift you up on my shoulders so you could see
the idea didn’t appeal to me at that moment
I preferred to be alone with him
and also with you
but now I regret
that I didn’t show him to you
--
Jáchym Topol
(Translated from the Czech by Eva Klimentová and Toby Litt )