At an Exhibition: ‘The Polish Peasant in Photographs to 1944’

I’m looking at you,
grandma
the way you’re sitting
in stiff lace
in a long skirt
in front of the cottage in Rakocice
the date under the photograph
1913.

You still don’t know
what I’ve known a long time
that in a year it all breaks loose
the armies roll,

but for now it’s quiet here
few people
I hear only
girl calling girl
‘the one in the Austrian uniform
is the very picture of Bogdan.’