The Three Magi To Lech Dymarski, By STANISLAW BARANCZAK

They will probably come just after the New Year.

As usual, early in the morning.

The forceps of the doorbell will pull you out by the head

from under the bedclothes; dazed as a newborn baby,

you’ll open the door. The star of an ID

will flash before your eyes.

Three men. In one of them you’ll recognize

with sheepish amazement (isn’t this a small

world) your schoolmate of years ago.

Since that time he’ll hardly have changed,

only grown a mustache,

perhaps gained a little weight.

They’ll enter. The gold of their watches will glitter (isn’t

this a gray dawn), the smoke from their cigarettes

will fill the room with a fragrance like incense.

All that’s missing is myrrh, you’ll think half-consciously--

while with your heel you’re shoving under the couch

the book they mustn’t find--

what is this myrrh, anyway,

you’d have to finally look it up

someday. You’ll come

with us, sir. You’ll go

with them. Isn’t this a white snow.

Isn’t this a black Fiat.

Wasn’t this a vast world.

From “Polish Poetry of the Last Two Decades of Communist Rule: Spoiling Cannibals’ Fun” edited and with translations by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh; introduction by Stanislaw Baranczak; foreword by Helen Vendler (Northwestern University Press: $12.95, paper; 204 pp.). Baranczak, born in 1946, co-founded KOR (Workers’ Defense Committee) in Poland in 1976 as well as Zapis, Communist Poland’s first uncensored literary quarterly. Since 1981, he has lived in the United States, teaching Polish literature at Harvard University. 1991 by Stanislaw Baranczak. Reprinted by permission .