Stanisław Barańczak - May 16, 1973 lyrics

One of those many dates that no longer ring a bell. Where I was going that day, what I was doing --- I don't know. Whom I met, what we talked about, I can't recall. If a crime had been committed nearby, I wouldn't have had an alibi. The sun flared and died beyond my horizons. The earth rotated unnoted in my notebooks. I'd rather think that I'd temporarily died than that I kept on living and can't remember a thing. I wasn't a ghost, after all. I breathed, I ate, I walked. My steps were audible, my fingers surely left their prints on doorknobs. Mirrors caught my reflection. I wore something or other in such-and-such a color. Somebody must have seen me. Maybe I found something that day that had been lost. Maybe I lost something that turned up later. I was filled with feelings and sensations. Now all that's like a line of dots in parentheses. Where was I hiding out, where did I bury myself? Not a bad trick to vanish before my own eyes. I shake my memory. Maybe something in its branches that has been asleep for years will start up with a flutter. No. Clearly I'm asking too much. Nothing less than one whole second.