'Children' by Ewa Lipska

Children get together for nostalgia nights.
Children get together at executive sessions.
Children have experience.
Some do not know about swans.

Children have identity cards. Birth certificates.
Case histories. Death certificates.
Children choose the leader who
makes a speech on a rocking horse.

Children kidnap ministers and aeroplanes.
Children emigrate to the ends of the earth.
Children inform on their parents.
Children fight for the right of dolls.
Children sit in astrakhan furs.
Pink cakes float in the air.
Children remember the Imperium Romanum
and sadly nod their little heads.

In the vast nursery of nations
children play ball and
spit cherry stones at one another.
They switch on an artificial sun
that rises like a mitigating circumstance.
Then children put their toys away
and earnestly start to work
on new children.

(1972)