Janusz Szuber: "About a Boy Stirring Jam"

A wooden spoon for stirring jam,
Dripping sweet tar, while in the pan
Plum magma’s bubbles blather.
For someone who can’t grasp the whole
There’s salvation in the remembered detail.
What, back then, did I know about that?
The real, hard as a diamond,
Was to happen in the indefinable
Future, and everything seemed
Only a sign of what was to come. How naïve.
Now I know inattention is an unforgivable sin
And each particle of time has an ultimate dimension.

"About a Boy Stirring Jam" by Janisz Szuber, from They Carry a Promise: Selected Poems, translated by Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough. © Knopf, 2009.

Photography credit: Unknown (originally color).