Bogumił Pacak-Gamalski-Graham

We are coming back. Yes, to the very beginning, when our god said: let it be light. And light happened. We were no longer blind. And our god thought for a second: what use is of light if they can’t see Love? And the god said: let there be Love. And Love happened.
Remember? Come, give me your hand, I will lead you to a little night dancing bar in south-west Calgary, close to a bridge hanging above fast mowing waters of Bow River.
But how can you make it happen? – you asked – will god move back time for us? Of course not, silly you – I answered. But our god will let us see through time, see the moment in time when Love happened.
You see My Dear Boy; you don’t have to understand everything. I don’t. But I trust our god of Love. If you are sitting in the car next to me, talking to me – we both know it is strange and not normal –than just accept it. Just take my hand, follow me through the dark 10th Avenue toward the bridge on 14 Street. Recognize the small dark square building? The one with little flickering rainbow. Of course you do. Let’s peak through the dark thick glass at the door. It is almost empty inside. It is not Friday or Saturday night when it fills in with crowds of hungry young men seeking each other to quell that ancient hunger. No, that was a regular weekday evening. There was just three young men sitting by the bar on tall stools.
You were silent for a second. Looked at me with sad smile, looked through the dark glass again and you whispered: that’s you, myself and my brother. I asked: and what do we do? My Boy answered: we talk, then we get up and go to dance floor and we dance. I exhale: Aha! But it only looks like just a dance. In truth we are love bearing. It is a lovebirth. Our god answered yours and my pleas. He gave us Love and we saw it through the Light. He didn’t lie. A promised fulfilled.
Wiping off a tear
A tear runs
through your
cheeks like
a stream of
clear pearls.
A flicker of sad
smile dances
in your eyes.
I kiss and
and wipe them
with a touch
of my fingertip.
No sadness please,
I plead with you.
Cry with happiness,
not with sorrow today.
Rejoice with that
memory, with that
journey in time.
Moment of coming
back to that town,
that place, that night.
Your flesh is warm
tonight, your eyes
are dreaming again,
your lips are trembling
and waiting for a kiss.
Tonight is our time
again, our gods
are giving us the gift
of Love, of promise
eternal to keep.
It won’t be broken
and it won’t be buried.
Just as you are real
tonight, sitting in a flesh
next to me, sending
quivers of anticipation
down my spine
and making me
sing again psalms
of thanks for
passion known
to young hearts
and old souls.
Be with me.
I had so many
long nights
of despair and
emptiness of
that vast bed
left only to
my body getting
smaller by the day,
by the night,
by the hour.
It was vast indeed,
that empty space
of our bed,
that turned into
the desert of Gobi,
the desert of Rumi’s
lover wandering
days on end
and nights under
stars flickering
above – for whom?
I have built
a fort of our Love
on forgotten,
lost and wild
beach of North Atlantic.
Because I couldn’t
look at the vast
empty bed of ours.
Even that was
not enough.
Not even the friendly
powerful waves
I swam in.
Although, they did
took pity in my sorrow
and offered graciously
the peace of cold
vastness of their depths
far from the shores
and noise of human
plights and pitfalls.
I run from them, too.
I run nonstop
for hundreds and
for thousands of miles.
I run the way we came
to these northern shores.
But I run opposite way,
I run back to our home,
and back to the beginning
of our time,
our Love
its birthplace –
where we emerged
from the cool and fast
waters of Elbow and Bow
Rivers, from the singing
mermaids of Fish Creek
at the foot of snowy peaks.
And I found you
wondering aimlessly,
blindly where all the waters meet
to become one.
And I grabbed you,
I hold you,
And I kissed you.
I won’t let go.
We will go again
to the other ocean,
to our home,
our waves,
our lovemaking.
Maybe we will go
On Capitol Hill there,
And walk to the small
trail down to
the inlet and find
the rock we liked
to seat on while
watching passing ships.
And we will plant
our souls there,
by that rock, under
that sky and moon.
Our souls will stay
there forever,
nothing will disturb them
separate them.
They will wave at
the shadows
of our bodies,
and will smile saying:
thank you. We will stay here.
And now you can go free.
Do you see now, My Boy,
why I did all of it?
The searching?
The running?
The travelling to
the beginning of time,
to the birthplace of Love
and Lovebearing?
Now you can’t
be sad anymore.
I can’t despair, either.
We were just vessels
for our souls
and our souls are
together again
till the end of times.
Our mission is done.
Let the sadness
be happy, fulfilled.
And smile at me once more.
I will kiss your
happy tear, too.
Thus, the saga ends. A saga of Love I had, a saga of Love I shared with My Boy. Or Love he had and shared with me.
I have written about it, that Love we shared, many times on these pages. At times it was a scream of pain and despair; at times pleading with Fates to turn time back, before that tragic day when My Boy died in my arms; at times it was rejoicing the time we had; or proclaiming urbi et orbi that he is alive in me, is part of me. None of that was a lie or imagination. We search for words and ask our imagination to name things we can’t truly comprehend or fully accept.
But the simple and honest answer is that my life have changed few times irrevocably: I was a different person before I met my Lover and become a different one after that meeting, absolutely and instantly understanding that I just can’t exist anymore without his presence in my life; the day My Boy ceased existing in a material world – I become once more a different person. I remembered, I resembled that previous versions of me, shared our common life – but I wasn’t IT anymore. And I know that it never will. Wish that it wasn’t like that – but accept that it is. Mostly – I’m filled with awe that I found my soulmate, soulsharer. A gift so rare and precious it escapes a name. But you do know and recognize IT the moment it appears.
One of the greatest poet of Romanticism, Adam Mickiewicz , wrote in his major drama “Dziady” famous sentence ‘Gustavus obitt – hic natus Conradus’[i] that begins the spiritual transformation of the main character of his long poem. But that transformation starts and continues for a very different reason and goals. The hero (Gustav) has a vision and proceeds to become a different person. I did not have any visions, nor did I planned to become someone else. Indeed – I never had become someone else. Emotional events have made major changes in and of my life. It changed me very much so, but it did not erased my past. I still carry it with me, the good and the bad. A gift of great love – if you receive one, and it is a rare occurrence – carries great peaks of pleasure and happiness … but it also could carry an immensely deep pits of darkness and sorrow. So dark and so deep it could swallow you whole. Am I advising you not to seek such love, not to try? No. But if I can be bold, I will say that walking up and down pleasant hills is not the same as climbing Mt. Everest. And many who did neither reach the peak nor returned. My climb or rather descent is only two years old. And I am still not sure if I will return to safe shelter.
[i] (translation from Latin) Gustav dies – Conrad is born