Ładny dzień (A Nice Day) by Jan Jakub Kolski

How and why certain things make their way into our lives is mysterious. That they come to occupy an important place in it might not perhaps be even as marvelous as the fact that the place had not existed there before, and yet as soon as it had opened up, 'before' ceased to exist.

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Impossible to stop watching Jan Jakub Kolski's A Nice Day. The 17-minute film is a day-long night-long poem, with an intricate syntax of simple words, image-motifs, monochrome narratives, sound particles... How to write, not on it but in its presence? how to muster enough silence so as not to speak in its stead? To write, perhaps, as one laughs, or weeps. The way one waits.

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...the tear of love and forgiveness sweet,
And submission to death beneath his feet;
The tear shall melt the sword of steel,
And every wound it has made shall heal.

(William Blake, The Grey Monk)

[Draft. Fragments]

Within the circle of the flame, within the circle of rain, I weep, and I burn.

Your face guards the trace of every tear. My eyes caress the sacred script.

My breast swells in the wake of your plow: fragrant earthfolds.

You draw liquid darkness in your pail, and pour pearling light over my flesh.

Rye grains in your pocket rattling softly like pennies. In your hands, they turn into birds.

You braid silence into your hair. Its whisper opens my dreams.

I know by heart the furrows of your field.

Z podziękowaniami dla T. za ładny dzień