Apologies to anyone who is on a strict diet, but I would like to set the scene for Anna Maria Mickiewicz's essay "Chocolate"-- although, as she shows us, chocolate is more than just a luscious kind of candy.
Chocolate
Salvador Dali's chocolate mouth shines out from an
exhibition at a modern art gallery in London. The marketing pulls people in with
the subtitle Red Hot Surrealism.
I don’t remember my first trip to Warsaw very well,
but one detail remains – chocolate at Café Wedel. The liquid variety in an
intricately translucent fine china cup. Even in times of crisis, the coffee
shop smelt of vanilla and sweet exotic spices. It was like a mirage in the
urban desert. In a black room behind heavy green curtains, a small coffee shop stuck
in the nineteenth century was operating normally, almost furtively. Here it was
all elegant furniture, flowers in vases and importantly – chocolate.
"What do you want to be?", people would ask.
The moment was approaching and I had to think. “I want to work in a chocolate
factory”, I answered, albeit still unaware of Roald Dahl; I’d been inspired by
the coffee shop. My reply raised a smile. I often repeated it, mischievously, just
for the fun of it. It was the seventies, a brief period when children were
allowed to dream in Poland.
Then the cycle of everyday life changed. In the Poland
of the eighties, thinking about chocolate was taboo... However, one day I was
given a box of After Eight, filled
with mint, in special individual little brown sleeves; I cherished them, limiting
myself to one a day.
I had only recently learned that chocolate factories
actually existed. There was one in San Francisco. Not long after I got there, I
saw the brown brick block by the ocean where they made chocolate by the tonne.
It was bitter, devoid of sensuality, aroma-free...
*
* *
One day I received two emails, from different continents.
Peter from America: you must see Chocolate, a brilliant romantic film, I warmly recommend it.
Annie from Sweden: That Chocolate, mawkish, two-dimensional characters, how could they have
made such a film!
Can anything be compared to Warsaw chocolate?
Maybe a cup of chocolate by Lake Como in Italy, glazed
by the sun's reflection; the cold deep clouds, the craggy hills, the elegant
women and the sensual mouth of Salvador...
*
* *
But in Warsaw, there’s no sensuality now. It’s best
represented by the stark reality of the Polish artist, who, disguised as a man
for the sake of her art, filmed naked men in a Budapest bath house.
Anna
Maria Mickiewicz
London,
2001
After chocolate, a walk in the park is good! The picture above is of Regent's Park, the subject of Anna Maria's next poem.
Regent’s Park
Invisible
clouds
In
Regent’s Park.
And
she
Tangled
by a rose muslin
Circled
by the sun
Her
golden feet
Walked
through the glass door
Under
the sky suspended
On
a steel clock
At
the top of Victorian towers
On
a misty evening
Anna Maria
Mickiewicz
London 2013
The Camellias
Deep in thought, streets of camellias
Deep in thought, streets of camellias
Drowse…
They wake up redolent with a smell of remembrance
Open their flowers, quickly stealing the sun’s rays
Open their flowers, quickly stealing the sun’s rays
They wait for the Hellenic messenger
For the aromatic waft of sapphire waves
Day by day
Against the gleaming
Rim of the London sky...
Against the gleaming
Rim of the London sky...
Anna
Maria Mickiewicz
London
2009
The mystery of time
Alone
In a silent garden
The spring snowdrops
Wake Socrates
from Plato's dream
of a dialogue
He makes a covenant
with eternity's evanescent closure
Alone
In a silent garden
The spring snowdrops
Wake Socrates
from Plato's dream
of a dialogue
He makes a covenant
with eternity's evanescent closure
forged
with
fragile cobwebs
It will keep secrets
enchanted
fragile cobwebs
It will keep secrets
enchanted
in the blackbird's song
Anna Maria Mickiewicz
The
high wave of the flood passed
A
painful empathy dropped
The
homeless man vanished
Mr Green mows the grass
The
cavalcade of heaven faded
Anna Maria Mickiewicz
London 2015
London 2015
An
Angel in London - poetry
I have seen an
angel
He was selling
carrots, tomatoes and strawberries
Blue-eyed
A bright face
Surrounded by
whiteness
But only his
wing was a bit chipped
He lifted his
pale eyelids
Lost in
languages
He was
stammering…
I dropped my
head
How can it be…
So young
A Nike lost in
London
Anna Maria Mickiewicz
London 2011
Summer in
Seaford
The sun sheds its golden drops.
The sea devours them instantly.
The sky shimmers.
The day is snatched from another story.
We’re arriving, here at the end of the line.
We convince ourselves that infinite space is an illusion…
We walk through the small English town.
A tiny station, plaster falling unevenly off the wooden beams.
Before us the Channel gleams threateningly.
In the distance a cliff plunges sharply into the sea.
No chips, no ice cream, no candy floss.
Dead jellyfish glitter on the pebbles.
The day passes lazily by
A ship silhouetted in grey against its face.
On the beach a couple unfold deckchairs
Wrinkled skin
They read the papers.
They seem unreal
Postimpressionist faces
All nonchalant
We’re heading back.
The cafes and restaurants are closed.
Who lives here at the end of the world?
Looking through photographs of the scandalous Bloomsbury set,
An old snapshot.
A gaunt young woman and a man in deckchairs.
They are reading the papers.
What if the woman on the beach was a cousin of Virginia Woolf's?
Who was the man?
A poet?
Or one of her scandalous friends?
The sun sheds its golden drops.
The sea devours them instantly.
The sky shimmers.
The day is snatched from another story.
We’re arriving, here at the end of the line.
We convince ourselves that infinite space is an illusion…
We walk through the small English town.
A tiny station, plaster falling unevenly off the wooden beams.
Before us the Channel gleams threateningly.
In the distance a cliff plunges sharply into the sea.
No chips, no ice cream, no candy floss.
Dead jellyfish glitter on the pebbles.
The day passes lazily by
A ship silhouetted in grey against its face.
On the beach a couple unfold deckchairs
Wrinkled skin
They read the papers.
They seem unreal
Postimpressionist faces
All nonchalant
We’re heading back.
The cafes and restaurants are closed.
Who lives here at the end of the world?
Looking through photographs of the scandalous Bloomsbury set,
An old snapshot.
A gaunt young woman and a man in deckchairs.
They are reading the papers.
What if the woman on the beach was a cousin of Virginia Woolf's?
Who was the man?
A poet?
Or one of her scandalous friends?
Anna Maria Mickiewicz
London
Anna Maria Mickiewicz is a Polish-born poet, writer and editor, who writes both in Polish and English. Anna lived in California and has now been in London for many years. She edits the annual literary magazine Pamiętnik Literacki (The Literary Notebook), London. She is a member of English Pen. As a student, she was a co-founder of a magazine Wywrotowiec (The Subversive). Her first collection of verse was published in 1985 and her selection of short stories and essays Okruchy z Okrągłego Stołu (Breadcrumbs from the Round Table) appeared in 2000. Her volume of poetry Proscenium was published in 2010.
Anna’s poetry has appeared in the United States, UK, Australia and Poland in many literary journals, including Syndic Literary Journal (California), Kritya, The Exiled Link (UK), Poezja Dzisiaj, Akant (Poland) and anthologies, such as Chopin with Cherries. A Tribute in Verse, (Moonrise Press: Los Angeles, 2010), Through A Child’s Eyes: Poems from World War Two, selected by: Moira Andrew (Poetry Space Ltd: Bristol, 2013), Contemporary Writers of Poland, edited by: Danuta Blaszak (Dreammee Little City: Orlando, 2013).
She regularly publishes poetry and literature in the London-based Nowy Czas - New Time - and has also written for many other journals, including Wprost (Poland), The Davis Enterprise (California), Nowy Dziennik (New York). Her poetry has been featured on the radio in the UK (Poets Anonymous), Australia, and Poland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOxa-oMdiRQ
The Polish Jazz Quartet performs "Promenade through Empty Streets": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_qqDLD4UXc
Enjoy!
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