KEEP IN MIND

Halina Poświatowska (Polish Lyric poet)
Translated by Maya Peretz

if you die
I won’t put on a lilac dress
won’t buy colored wreaths
with whispering wind in the ribbons
none of that
none

the hearse will come — will comethe hearse will go — will go
I’ll stand at the window — I’ll look
wave my hand
flutter my handkerchief
bid farewell
alone in that window

and in summer
in crazy May
I will lie down on the grass
warm grass
and with my hands will touch your hair
and with my lips will touch a bee’s pelt
prickly and beautiful
like your smile
like dusk

later it will be
silver — golden
perhaps golden and only red
for that dusk
that wind
which whispers love into grasses
stubbornly whispers love
will not allow me to rise
and go
so simply
to my cursed deserted house

(From : Indeed I love… : Selected Poems of Halina Poświatowska)

Poświatowska is famous for her lyrical poetry, and for her intellectual, passionate yet unsentimental poetry on the themes of death, love, existence, famous historical personages, especially women, as well as her mordant treatment of life, living, being, bees, cats and the sensual qualities of loving, grieving and desiring. (Wiki). Sadly, she died at the age of 32.

This poem is a quietly devastating meditation on grief, love, memory, and the raw, unresolved emotions that accompany loss. In a style that is both intimate and elusive, she rewrites the rituals of mourning into something more personal, elemental, and sensual.

The tone is restrained and almost dispassionate at first — “if you die / I won’t put on a lilac dress” — rejecting traditional mourning practices and ceremonial grief. But under the surface, this emotional flatness conceals a profound depth of love and vulnerability. The voice is solitary, meditative, and deeply personal — as if the speaker is speaking not to us, but directly to the beloved (possibly already lost).

The poem is built in two parts: the first coolly dismisses outward mourning rituals; the second opens into a lyrical outpouring of natural imagery that becomes the speaker’s private language of grief. Rather than the expected flowers and ribbons — “colored wreaths / with whispering wind in the ribbons” — she offers a stark image of detachment: standing alone at the window, waving a handkerchief. But then, in the second half, she transforms grief into a tactile communion with nature:

“I will lie down on the grass / warm grass / and with my hands will touch your hair / and with my lips will touch a bee’s pelt”

Here, Poświatowska fuses the sensory world — grass, bees, hair, wind — with the emotional and metaphysical. The bee’s pelt, “prickly and beautiful,” becomes a metaphor for the beloved’s smile, for the sting and sweetness of memory. The dusk, golden and red, echoes the complexity of letting go — a moment suspended between light and darkness.The final lines resist closure. Even the wind becomes an accomplice, “whispers love into grasses / stubbornly whispers love.” This persistent whisper of love paralyzes the speaker — she cannot “rise and go / so simply.”

Like John Donne, Poświatowska offers a deeply sensual and metaphysical approach to mourning, where nature becomes both witness and medium of love and grief. KEEP IN MIND is a tender rebellion against formal rituals, and a haunting portrait of loss — not as an ending, but as a transformation of love into something eternal, diffused into the elements.