On Earth, we are ants,
crushed by wheels of history -
in Heaven, starlight
Rest in peace and shine brightly for us to see the light, Mr. Charlie Kirk (1993-2025).
I was profoundly moved by this vicious assassination for personal reasons. In my editorial in the Poetry Letter, No. 3 of 2025, I tried to capture my distress about this national tragedy, but got bogged down in too many details. So I moved the longer version of my text here and expanded it, adding new haiku and older poems.
https://www.californiastatepoetrysociety.com/2025/09/csps-poetry-letter-no-3-of-2025-part-i.html
When I attended high school in Poland, it seemed
that almost every month brought a commemoration of a national tragedy – 17
January 1945 was the “Liberation of Warsaw” Day when the Red Army finally
entered an empty, ruined city (all residents had already been deported and the
city had systematically been dynamited by Germans, in retribution for the
Warsaw Uprising, 1 August to 3 October, 1944 – with over 220,000 dead, a
painful national wound). The January Uprising against Russians was long ago, in
1863 – it drained the nation of its leaders, murdered or exiled.
The 10th
of February 1940 marked the start of mass deportation of Poles from the
country’s eastern part, occupied by Soviets – taken to Siberia or Kazakhstan,
over one million perished, about 3.5 million were displaced. In March 1968 we had
student revolts for freedom and the “socialist” government’s crackdown coupled
with an anti-Semitic campaign that gave one-way tickets to the remnant of
Polish Jewry. The whole month of April was about WWII – concentration camps,
death camps, and their victims – nearly 6 million, half Jewish, half Christian;
but we also remembered the 1.5 million Armenians and their genocide of 1915.
The
9th of May marked the end of WWII, commemorated battle by battle; the 1st of September was the start of the school year, but also the anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. The end of October brought everyone to cemeteries and monuments, with candles and wreaths, to remember all the dead, especially soldiers and war victims. Zaduszki (All Souls’ Day) continued, de facto, through November (with November Uprising of 1831 marking the historical horizon, when thousands of fighters were killed, deported to Siberia, or exiled). The 13th of December 1981 was the anniversary of Martial Law used by the “socialist” government to suppress the Solidarity movement – resulting in yet another wave of repressions, deaths, and mass migration. Some of these dates were taught at schools, others, secretly, at home. Some are now being forgotten while new national martyrdom celebrations emerge. . .
I lived in Poland for 30 years, in Canada for 8 years and in the U.S. for another 30 years. When I came to this country I made a choice about my identity, that I recently described for a friend who asked me "what it means for you to be Polish American?" My answer:
At a time of globalist attacks against humanity and purposeful efforts to destroy nation-states in Europe and the Western civilization worldwide, it is paramount to preserve, protect and perpetuate the multitude of national, linguistic and ethnic identities that contribute to the spiritual and material richness of this world. Poland, in Europe, continues to be inhabited by its indigenous population that settled those lands thousands of years ago, after the last ice age. As a proud descendant of Slavs - Poles and Byelorussians - I'm aware of the abundant treasures of history, language and culture that constitute my personal Polish heritage and my challenge - to remember, contribute to, and cherish. As an immigrant to America, where I ended up after a convoluted and difficult life journey, I'm a proud citizen of this great nation, founded only 250 years ago, but making a dramatic change in the world's history. Here, in the U.S., the individual's rights and freedoms are protected by the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Our country is not a democracy but a republic, where every citizen can create a successful life and contribute to the whole national tapestry in a unique way. Since coming here I have consciously made a decision to become an American of Polish descent, not a Pole in America. As a historian, I write about Polish Americans, Poles in America and Americans of Polish descent. As a Californian poet, I write in English, the language of my choice. But I write about my Polish childhood, the war tragedies of my family - and my sunny California garden, my home.
Emigrating to the U.S. meant learning an entirely new calendar of national sorrows; there were fewer than in Poland, perhaps because of the national focus on success, not martyrdom, perhaps because the U.S. avoids remembering the dead (Halloween!!!) and teaching the tragic war history in the media. Here, I kept reading about the Pearl Harbor attack of 7 December 1941 and deaths of thousands of American soldiers, remembered along with the victims of the Hiroshima atomic bomb atrocity of 6 August 1945 and the atomic annihilation of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. But not much more. Things changed on 11 September 2001 when nearly three thousand people were murdered, and the endless War on Terror began.
On 10 September 2025, a martyr of free speech was assassinated in front of his wife, young daughter, thousands of students, and bystanders. Charlie Kirk (1993-2025) was viciously shot in a political assassination, that continued an infamous American “tradition.” Let’s recall the assassinations of Presidents Abraham Lincoln (1865), James A. Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901), and John F. Kennedy (1963). If we add to this list the presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy (1968) and the civil right leader Martin Luther King (1968), the image of a deadly political culture is bleak.
My parents in the desert of Abu Dhabi, 1990s.
I’m particularly sensitive to this issue, since my parents were shot by robbers in their summer house in the Polish village on 3 April 2000. My father Aleksy Trochimczyk was shot through the stomach, with injury to major organs, and after a year in the hospital, multiple surgeries, dialyses, blood transfusion, died a year later. My mother, Henryka Trochimczyk lived for 13 years after having 1/3 of her lung amputated. The bullet went 3 cm. away from her heart. This was a robbery, not an assassination, my parents were victims, not martyrs. But I’m “allergic” to anyone claiming that anyone, anywhere, has any “right” to express their opinion by committing murder. That’s the playbook of Nazis and Communists.
What is true? What's real?
A wise man asks young students
Silence, their answer.
Or, maybe I should write "bullet" and "cheering" - "their answer" - how utterly inhuman.
After immigrating to America, and moving into my home in California, I slowly started to learn about my new country. At first, seeing American flags everywhere felt strange, we did not do it in Poland. Then, I saw all my neighbors decorating their houses with flags and bunting for the Fourth of July. They told me to go see our homegrown local Independent day parade ... In my youth, in "socialist" Poland, the flag and national symbols were taken over by the government, so people retreated into homes and churches. There was no flag waving, no public displays of patriotism, just Corpus Christi and Easter processions in the streets…
Corpus Christi in Warsaw -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiNAJIKnVf0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjKrjOEZXZk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtdVcNL8NDA
But in California, my three-year-old son, in pre-kindergarten Robbin's Nest, commenced each day with reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, toddlers turned towards the flag in the playroom’s corner. Every classical music concert at the Hollywood Bowl starts with the national anthem, and the whole audience holds their right hands on their hearts while singing "the land of the brave..." So, I printed out the words, and put the note into my wallet, and started singing along. . . Then, I bought a flag for my porch, and after my Canadian, “un-American” husband finally moved to Canada, I had that flag installed. My neighbor did it for me, the same one who changed my broken screen…
With such good neighbors, I decided to make this little house in the mountains my real home, my hermitage, my shelter, my refuge. If it were American, on American land, I had to become American, too. My neighbors helped. Ours is the best neighborhood in the country. When my kids lost their house keys on the way to or back from school for the umpteenth time, I decided to stop locking the door during the day. We did it at night, but in the morning, we just left, waving bye-bye to the kind neighbors, trusting they would keep watching over us, without being intrusive. The neighbors were always in…My next door neighbor actually still has my keys for emergencies, when I travel to Europe...
Garden with mockingbirds -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjKrjOEZXZk (two birds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aKsDADyjmQ (roses)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvDxBt9RVKs (one rose)
So my first lesson of what it means to be American is patriotism. Love your country, wave that flag, sing that anthem...
My second lesson in being American is – being a good neighbor. On my street, we had our 40th Easter egg hunt this year, with over 30 grandchildren of the original neighbors, including those who moved away but still cherish this tradition. I hide 40 chocolate-stuffed eggs and two golden ones with money in my front yard. The young ones are having fun, parents drink coffee and chat.
If there were a wildfire, as in 2017, seniors, mothers and children would evacuate, while the men would stay to extinguish the ambers falling on all houses on our street, keep pouring water from all the sprinklers and hoses, on all the roofs. The good neighbor - a Republican who'd save a Democrat in the fire...
That’s how it was, that’s how it is, that’s how it should be: “Hi, Maja” – at the post office. “Good morning, Maja” – at the grocery store.” “long time, no see” – at the bakery. Kindness, friendliness, support, and respect for individual rights and choices. Alas, we have to lock the doors now– after the border was opened to anyone from the whole planet to just walk in and take what was not theirs, the area filled with strangers who even put up tents on busy streets, and moved their RVs onto some alleys. They did not dare take over ours. My good neighbors have guns.
As a patriotic American poet, I ride or walk in the Independence Day Parade - and give out postcards with poems, here's one from last year...
https://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2024/07/poets-in-parade-celebrating.html
FREEDOM IS NOT FREE
Someone works to keep it.Someone stands guard for the republic.Semper Fides. Always Faithful. Would I be brave enoughto stand guard with them? Freedom is not free. I work hard to win it for myself.I strive to not be swayed left or right.I stand tall with the eyes on the prize ahead.My steps — on the straight and narrow. Free — from vain ambitions, obsessions, sorrows, fears, resentments and regrets.Free — to live well, create, speak up,care for, share joy, and love. “I am —You are — We are”—this love,the glue that holds the cosmos together,in harmony — a forgotten word —“harmony” — the order of beauty and peace. What is freedom? Cosmos, not chaos. Harmony, not discord. Gratitude. Divine perfection blooming in all. Red-white-and-blue waving in the breeze. Fireworks in July evening sky.
Maja Trochimczyk, © 4 July 2024
The third truly American virtue that I've earned since moving here 28 years ago, is tolerance - but not the suicidal faux compassion of current governments in Western Europe. It is the simple rule of "live and let live." In other words: "Do not do unto others, what you do not want others to do unto you" - the Golden Rule. To me, it seems deeply Christian in its genesis, or maybe universal as the variants of the Golden Rule, the main ethical concept, appear in Buddhism, Judaism, or Hinduism, not just Christianity. It means that I have to live my life to the best of my ability, use my talents to benefit the greatest number of people, not just enrich myself, or my immediate family. It also means that I have to refrain from harming, judging, and condemning anyone else, while living my own life without fear of rejection or condemnation. "To each their own" (another ancient Christian saying). Thus, if I do not appreciate the pop music blasting from loudspeakers on the Venice Beach, I go find another spot... but can write a haiku about it...
the soothing ocean waves
silenced by blaring pop songs -
California beach
Then, instead of the crowded Venice beach, I can go to Oxnard's Mandalay Beach and be almost alone at a wide expanse of sand, waves, and sky. I recorded such waves in Oxnard - the breath of the ocean https://youtu.be/qSL_tyrsdpQ. Though they hardy sound peaceful... seem rather dangerous, with hidden power within...
On another occasion, I recorded parts of the Mass at the Notre Dame in Paris, before the fire (2015). So peaceful,,, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZsOBsT-pwo
As poets, we do not discuss religion, do not “call upon God’s name” in vain. Since I’ve changed my views and religious beliefs so profoundly several times during my adventurous life, I do not like to “proselytize” or convince anyone of my truth. What if I change my mind again? Who knows if what I believe now is my final truth?
Do I know better?
The question of a lifetime
- without an answer
Charlie Kirk was different. He boldly professed his faith in Jesus, the tenets of his faith, rooted in the Bible that he cited often. Yes, I did not feel comfortable with some parts of his discussions and debates. After decades as an atheist, I became very Catholic, and moved on to believing in reincarnation. But I'm not a Protestant, and do not like to call upon "Jesus" in public. On that point, we disagreed. But we also had something in common. Charlie Kirk described the ideal Christian life of a husband, a good son, a worker, a citizen. That's what my Catholic nun Godmother taught - in order to go to Church on Sunday, you have to be the best possible mother, daughter, friend, worker, scholar... every day of the week...
For Charlie, courage was the most important virtue, for me it was one of the four virtues forming a perfect cross - courage tempered by moderation, justice defined by prudence, or wisdom. These "cardinal virtues" are at the core of Christian Western ethics. With Greek and Roman roots...
Justice: Do what's right, what's fair.
Fortitude: Keep smiling. Grin and bear.
Temperance: Don't take more than your share
Prudence: Choose wisely. Think and care.
Find yourself deep within your heart
In a circle of cardinal virtues
The points of your compass
Your Cornerstone.
Once you've mastered the steps, new ones appear.
Faith: You are not alone.
Hope: And all shall be well...
Love: The very air we breathe
Where we are.
I first posted this poem in 2012, when I was teaching inmates in a class at Pitchess Detention Center called EVA - Ethics and Values in Art. I then discovered the amazing Hawaiian practice of ho'oponopono - Love and Forgiveness... It seems to me that the young man martyred so cruelly in front of thousands, his wife, and his young daughter, was practicing this virtuous behavior in his own life.
ON SQUARING THE CIRCLE
It is a simple square that contains the circle —
four ideas, four words —
— Sorry — Forgive — Thank — Love —
No need for explanations,
long winding roads of words
leading into the arid desert
of heartless intellect, auras
of geometric shapes floating above
your head — a scattered halo
of squares, sharp-edged cubes
prickly triangles, and hexahedrons
No, not that. Instead let us find
the cornerstone. Simplicity.
Sorry — to erase the past
Forgive— to open a path into the future
Thank— to suffuse the way, each moment
with the velvet softness of gratitude
Love — to find a pearl unlike any other,
a jewel of lustrous shine — incomparable,
dazzling, smooth, pulsating sphere
A dot on the horizon grows
as you, step by step, come closer
until you enter into the shining
palace without rooms
where inside is outside,
the circumference is in the point,
the point in the circumference—
where movement is stillness
and stillness dances within —
traveling to a myriad planets,
suns, galaxies, with unheard-of
velocity, everywhere at once
Love everyone — Respect everything
* * *
So that’s how you square a circle
Maja Trochimczyk, published in Into Light (2016),
reprinted in Altadena Poetry Review (2018)
https://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2012/04/poetry-for-children-and-for-prisoners.html
During that year that the world was supposed to end (2012, right?), I was trying to figure out what virtues meant for me. Gratitude came on top.
https://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2012/11/on-virtues-and-gratitude-in-time-for.html
Big Tujunga Wash with an artwork by Barbara Koziel Gawronska
that features Polish fields seen from a train window...
Sometimes it is very hard to be grateful. For instance, when my friend Basia Gawronska died of stroke in 2009, on Monday before the Thanksgiving feast I was to attend with her. A sudden death, not a murder, not an assassination, yet she left a hole in our lives. I wrote two memorial poems for her, after a very sorrowful funeral, where everyone was crying, here's one written from a distance in time. There was Basia with us, but she is not here anymore. There was a moment of wonder captured in her artwork - she implied Divine presence by adding golden threads or small mirrors to her art... The poem brings images of transience, a sound that's ending and resonates in memory, an image of a horse running to the fence, where it stops. But there is a hint of the Divine in the spiraling movement of the bird up air currents, of the soul into "ascension" - carried on the Divine wings...
Ascension - A Memorial Poem
Basia Koziel Gawrońska in memoriam
If you go down Oro Vista towards the mountains,
and look up between the crape myrtle’s
reddish leaves, you’ll see a hawk circling
above charred slopes, blackened gullies.
Higher, higher, rising to the white stripes
of clouds that measure the blue expanse,
a hang glider flies, looking for happiness,
like the hawk searching for mice.
If Basia were with us, she’d sketch
the blur of motion in her notebook,
the horse that ran down the muddy slope,
her mane flowing, body shining against the bare
soil beaten to a pulp. She looks like, she is,
freedom, until the chain-link fence stops her.
We, too, cherish glimpses of elation,
affection growing in the garden
between strawberries and sage.
The air cupola shifts above a gingko tree.
The flutter of yellow triangles moves
indigo depths of the sky. Strong
branches spread the joy of centuries.
Basia’s gone. What are we,
but the leaves turning gold,
catching the last rays of crimson light?
We dance like fireflies at dusk.
Long ago, when the clanging
of milk pails announced the waning
of the day in a Polish village,
we heard echoes of funereal bells,
calling, ringing out to heaven.
Basia’s gone. The black mare stops,
bewildered, panting. Her mane
still waltzes like the waves of the tide.
The gingko leaves fall. The hawk
and the glider meet and part high up
where the clouds open for Basia
to come in with her sketchbooks, paintings,
her silvery threads of light, and mirrors
she broke for us to see where we are.
So I remember Basia every Thanksgiving. And to keep being grateful now, I follow an account on x.com "Daily Gratitude" and each day it brings reminder of obvious and hidden blessings to ponder and be grateful for. My bones, electricity, running water... neighbors... So let me end this set of reflection with a simple thought:
The life of Charlie was a blessing for his friends and for strangers, a challenge for his enemies, a gift of inspiration and reflection for us all.
