Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
Happenstance reveals its tricks.
It produces, by sleight of hand, a glass of brandy
and sits Henry down beside it.
I enter the bistro and stop dead in my tracks.
Henry—he’s none other than
Agnes’s husband’s brother,
and Agnes is related
to Aunt Sophie’s brother-in-law.
It turns out
we’ve got the same great-grandfather.
In happenstance’s hands
space furls and unfurls,
spreads and shrinks.
The tablecloth
becomes a handkerchief.
Just guess who I ran into
in Canada, of all places,
after all these years.
I thought he was dead,
and there he was, in a Mercedes.
On the plane to Athens,
At a stadium in Tokyo.
Happenstance twirls a kaleidoscope in its hands.
A billion bits of colored glass glitter.
And suddenly Jack’s glass
bumps into Jill’s.
Just imagine in the very same hotel.
I turn around and see—
it’s really her!
Face to face in an elevator.
In a toy store.
At the corner of Maple and Pine.
Happenstance is shrouded in a cloak.
Things get lost in it and are found again.
I stumbled on it accidentally
I bent down and picked it up.
Once look and I knew it,
a spoon from that stolen service.
If it hadn’t been for that bracelet,
I would never have known Alexandra.
The clock? It turned up in Potterville.
Happenstance looks deep into our eyes.
Our head grows heavy.
Our eyelids drop.
We want to laugh and cry,
it’s so incredible.
From fourth-grade home room to that ocean liner.
It has to mean something.
To hell and back,
and here we meet halfway home.
We want to shout:
Small world!
You could almost hug it!
And for a moment we are filled with joy,
radiant and deceptive.
