White Chairs by Krystyna Dąbrowska

women and men climb up on them to see each other over the partition.

White Chairs

by Krystyna Dąbrowska

^{translated from the Polish by Karen Kovacik}

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Let ordinariness in poetry be like the white
plastic chairs by the Wailing Wall.
In them, not in showy armchairs,
the old rabbis pray,
foreheads touching the wall’s stone.
Regular plastic chairs—
women and men climb up on them
to see each other over the partition.
And the mother of a boy celebrating his bar mitzvah
steps onto a chair and showers her son with candies
as he bids childhood good- bye.
Let ordinariness in poetry be like these chairs,
which vanish to make room
for a circle dance on the Sabbath.

First Published in The Southern Review (Winter 2019)