My cousin saw my birthplace — “Czechoslovakia”
and mockingly cackled:
“There is no such country, you were born nowhere, you don’t exist.”
I swallowed my tongue,
I went blue as an infant too tightly swaddled,
abandoned
on history’s doorstep.
Now, in this place there is a beautiful park,
where people like me walk their dogs,
people who are not recognized by history as by a surrogate mother.

_ Translated by Pawel Sakowski