October 2011
2 posts
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Lyrical Zone by Zbigniew Herbert
A view of a park and a wall in the early evening light as in Corot- lemon peel skin of a powdered cheek after a ball air cast in gold and you don’t have to hear anything here no whispers or stifled cries no touch sweaty hands clatter of hooves only the soul becomes a painfully fragile spiderweb and it hangs in the air like Gioconda’s smile the smile of Etruscan girls the...
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I Wish I Had a Master by Julia Fiedorczuk
for S.F. I wish I had a master to teach me how to live, to eat with knife and fork as well as to write poems he’d tell me how the stars like people are born and die and like people live in constellations I’d listen to my master attentively for one stray word would mean the fall of kingdoms the suspension of time my master’s words carved from the body would be clear. (Translated by Benjamin Paloff;...
September 2011
2 posts
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Photograph from September 11 by Wislawa Szymborska
They jumped from the burning floors— one, two, a few more, higher, lower.
The photograph halted them in life, and now keeps them above the earth toward the earth.
Each is still complete, with a particular face and blood well-hidden.
There’s enough time for hair to come loose, for keys and coins to fall from pockets.
They’re still within the air’s reach, within the compass of places ...
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Light From Another World by Mieczyslaw Jastrun
One life has passed I passed over what hurt the most in silence I forgot about the changes they grew pale like stars at dawn shining in leafless trees Light from another world embraced me A hyacinth’s keen scent And nothing- like a stone thrown into water nothing- like water turned to stone frozen by the morning cold One life has passed I passed over silence in silence I forgot on this...
August 2011
5 posts
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Poetry Lesson by Adam Czerniawski
The poet who once wrote “I love you passionately” and later “nife in yr gut”
Now writes “Your face already illegible like a worn stone”
Critics track the formal changes and note the shift in style and expression
(Translated by Iain Higgins)
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“At the entrance, my bare feet on the dirt floor, Here, gusts of heat; at my...”
– Czeslaw Milosz
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Photograph by Marcin Swietlicki
In the corner of the street an apparition – as if a small fraction of blizzard – as if miseries went astray – went searching for someone I opened the window – and so it remains in the corner of the street a still flurry me leaning forward and anticipating and the harsh features of a winter sun
(Translated by Elzbieta Wojcik-Leese)
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How To Walk Downstairs by Dariusz Sosnicki
How to walk downstairs older by a bell’s ignored chirp by a note I leave on the door? In a stranger’s house, banisters turn their backs on me.
(Translated by Tadeusz Pioro)
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First the Dog by Zbigniew Herbert
to Laika So first the faithful dog will go and after it a pig or ass through the black grass will beat a track along it will the first man steal who with iron hand will smother on his glass brow a drop of fear so first the dog honest mongrel which has never abandoned us dreaming of earthly lamps and bones will fall asleep in its whirling kennel its warm blood boiling drying away but...
July 2011
6 posts
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Telephone by Marzanna Kielar
you were burning dry branches and weeds – I heard fire rustle in the receiver, your whistle when the dogs once again tried to get at the mole-hills where yesterday we picked plums from among the rampant grass; evening drew near – the wind blew breath into its puppy muzzle. The sticky prunes, we ate them for supper. I was leafing through a book on water gardens, photographs of marsh plants – I...
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Nothing Special by Zbigniew Herbert
nothing special boards paint nails paste paper string mr artist builds a world not from atoms but from remnants forest of arden from umbrella ionian sea from parkers quink just as long as his look is wise just as long as his hand is sure - and presto the world - hooks of flowers on needles of grass clouds of wire drawn out by the wind
(Translated by Alissa Valles)
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“I said so little.
Days were short.”
– Czeslaw Milosz (via thewhiskeysutras and COULEURS:)
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Grass Accepts by Jacek Podsiadlo
The grass accepts the cigarette ends & brown crawly things thrown out of the tent. The earth, the largest orphanage in the universe, patiently tolerates our childish whims & antics. Our tears & shooting at each other, pouring salt into the fruit salad & placing bombs underneath things. A strong wind blowing, the tent clutches the earth as tightly as a child hangs onto its...
June 2011
13 posts
5 tags
Read:
I’ll be posting sparsely or not at all for the next few weeks, as I’ll be traveling (I’ll actually be in Poland for quite a while)! Please be patient with me, I will try my best to update when I can. :) In the meantime, keep submitting and writing and reading poetry. You can also follow my other tumblr here.
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“There is no one between you and me.
Neither a plant drawing sap from the depths...”
– Czeslaw Milosz, Selected Poems, excerpt from “Hymn” (via orioninacobweb)
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The Lamp by Anna Kamienska
I write in order to comprehend not to express myself I don’t grasp anything I’m not ashamed to admit it sharing this not knowing with a maple leaf So I turn with questions to words wiser than myself to things that will endure long after us I wait to gain wisdom from chance I expect sense from silence Perhaps something suddenly will happen and pulse with hidden truth like the spirit of the flame in...
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“I have read many books but I don’t believe them.
When it hurts we return to the...”
– from I Sleep a Lot by Czeslaw Milosz (via watercolour nights)
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“Perhaps we become aware of our existence only when we feel on our skin the touch...”
– Andrzej Stasiuk, On The Road to Babadag (via invisiblestories)
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Elsewhere by Ewa Lipska
I’d like to live Elsewhere. In hand-embroidered towns. To meet those who are not born into the world. At last we would be happily alone. No stop would wait for us. No arrival. No departure. Evanescence in a museum. No wars would fight for us. No humanity. No army. No weapon. Tipsy death. It would be fun. In the library a multi-volume time. Love. A mad chapter. It would turn the pages of our...
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1000 Polish Book Covers →
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She Cried That Night, but Not for Him to Hear by...
To Ania, the only one
She cried that night, but not for him to hear. In fact her crying wasn’t why he woke. It was some other sound; that much was clear.
And this half-waking shame. No trace of tears all day, and still at night she works to choke the sobs; she cries, but not for him to hear.
And all those other nights: she lay so near but he had only caught the breeze’s...
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Proofs by Tadeusz Rozewicz
Death will not correct a single line of verse she is no proof-reader she is no sympathetic lady editor
a bad metaphor is immortal
a shoddy poet who has died is a shoddy dead poet
a bore bores after death a fool keeps up his foolish chatter from beyond the grave
(Translated by Adam Czerniawski;submitted by toglorifythingsbecausetheyare )
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“Consolation
Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in...”
– Czeslaw Milosz
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Untitled by Halina Poswiatowska
these words have always existed in the open smile of a sunflower in the dark wing of a crow and also in the frame of a door left ajar even when there was no door they existed in the branches of a simple tree and you want me to have them to myself to be the crow’s wing the birch and the summer you want me to buzz as beehives do when open to sunshine fool i do not own these words i borrow...
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“I write in order to comprehend, not to express myself.”
–
Anna Kamienska
(via toglorifythingsbecausetheyare)
May 2011
26 posts
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Forest by Zbigniew Herbert
A path runs barefoot through the forest. In the forest there are a lot of trees, a cuckoo, Hansel and Gretel, and other small animals. There aren’t any dwarfs; they got out on time. When it gets dark the owl locks the forest with a big key, because if a cat got in there, then there would be some damage done.
(Translated by Alissa Valles)
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My Masters by Adam Zagajewski
My masters are not infallible. They’re neither Goethe, who had a sleepless night only when distant volcanoes moaned, nor Horace, who wrote in the language of gods and altar boys. My masters seek my advice. In fleecy overcoats hurriedly slipped on over their dreams, at dawn, when the cool wind interrogates the birds, my masters talk in whispers. I can hear their broken speech.
...
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The Inquietude by Grazyna Chrostowska
The day is like the inquietude of Chopin’s music, The birds, scared away from their nests are circling Low above the earth, They are listening, afraid…
Quietness in the nature, warmth is like before a storm. From the West, low, dark clouds flow. Waylaid fear strikes into the heart. Homesickness, homesickness…
I want to walk on soggy roads, Listen to the sound of wind, Hunt the...
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Let It Talk by Artur Miedzyrzecki
Let the tree talk which has grown tall within you Lend a patient ear to the lament of its leaves Let the birds talk among its boughs
(Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak)
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Untitled by Edward Stachura
Dreams were found dreams I once put into my pocket with a hole when the night the big crow flew to the river transparent-good That night bats devoured all the stars white butterflies only black butterflies were left Truth was then like the moon rolling on the smooth mirror for four weeks Dreams were found a thick oak stick
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Too late for anything, too early for nothing by...
Unexpectedly we’ll meet again years later, quite on purpose we’ll mix beer and wine with vodka, to ride bicycles in the middle of the night around the estate, unexpectedly bumping into the high
kerbstones, trampling flowerbeds, cutting our cheeks on branches that have sprung up unexpectedly, then un- expectedly to fall over, and pushing our warped bicycles, come to my place, to...
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The Word by Kazimierz Wierzynski
What waited my appearance here? The word, branch cut from an ancient tree to which belongs the violin I fashioned for my hands to play the rustling ashtree of my songs.
What waits this moment with me still? The word, in which my birth, as in a cradle, sways, in which, as in a coffin of plain pine, I lie, and tell my first and last days.
What waits when I have disappeared? The word. And my...
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Don't Leave Me by Jacek Podsiadlo
Don’t stop loving me. Not even for a second. Think of me morning & evening, & when praying. Even at the cost of missing a meal even if it means you lose more weight. Feel free, watch ‘Dempsey & Makepeace’, look at the displays of dresses in the shop windows, the symptoms of any disease on your body - but just hold me in front of your eyes.
Shifting fifty kilo...
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from The Plains by Tadeusz Rozewicz
But in me are collected all images unsaid to which shape has not been given color meaning people with mouths glued by lime sulphate Oh how it buds grows within me the silent seed of dead fruit
It moves upward to light thrusts through the blind clay of my flesh breaking inspiring my wooden tongue
(Translated by Paul Mayewski)
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Of Course by Piotr Sommer
he won’t tell you his whole life in three hours or in three days, even if he really wanted to show you that he likes you and trusts you. There’s just no way to do it, because whoever said sympathy has to be sustained by detailed knowledge. No one, of course. Perhaps that’s why one can not hurry, and permit oneself silence, and words only when one wants. And now try to trust him in this absence of...
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Grandfather by Zbigniew Herbert
He was kind. He loved canaries, children, and long masses. He ate marshmallows. Everyone said: grandfather had a golden heart. Until the heart misted over one day. Granddad died. He abandoned his kind, concerned body and became a ghost.
(Translated by Alissa Valles)
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The Glimpse by Krzysztof Kamil Baczynski
Nothing shall return. These the times already forgotten; only darkness - how evil and empty - sets in mirrors on my own images.
O, I know, by heart I know and do not wish to repeat; I cannot know my forms in advance. Thus I die with half-revealed God on my lips.
And now again we sit in a circle, and planet rain rumbles at walls, and the heavy gaze like a rope over table, and clouds of silence...
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This Place by Grzegorz Musial
this place. this is where I am growing. this is where I can sing. this is where I try. where I lose this place. not the table. not the chair. not even this house.
those people. this is what they trust. this is where they are waiting. these are the windows from which they keep watch over me day after day. a recognizable coat. a familiar walk. this is the door I knock at every day.
this place....
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The Dream by Grazyna Chrostowska
I had the dream where you read your own poems, Like those written sometime ago, only these were in the grey book written after death…
And you look finer, paler and tinier every passing moment, Then you disappeare.
The last to vanish were your hands And only the poems were left unharmed And in the poems was left someone’s heart.
(Translated by Jarek Gajewski)
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“People don’t like poetry in Poland. Why is that? Perhaps in part because we link...”
– Anna Kamienska (Industrious Amazement: A Notebook)
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Questions at a Poetry Reading by Ewa Lipska
What’s your favorite color? Your happiest day? Did any poem outrun your imagination? Do you have any hope? You frighten us. Why is the sky black? Who shot down time? Was it an empty hand, a hat sailing across the sea? Why a wedding dress with a funeral wreath? Why hospital corridors Instead of forest paths? Why the past and not the future? Do you have faith? or don’t...
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Untitled by Bronislaw Maj
Evening behind the wall a child wails, soothing words, a lullaby. Scraps of talk, voices reach me through the walls: I don’t know never Mom I’m coming remember why it’ll be all right
Behind all the walls of my room, behind any walls anywhere — the talking never stops. I don’t see the faces, eyes; I hear voices: unimaginable ties binding each with each,...
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Little Town by Zbigniew Herbert
By the day there are fruits and sea, by night stars and sea. Di Fiori Street is a cone of cherry colors. Noon. The sun beats its white stick on the green shades. In a laurel grove, oxen sing an ode to shadows. At that moment I decided to declare my love. The sea holds its peace and the little town swells like the breasts of the girl selling figs.
(Translated by Alissa Valles)
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Watery World by Marzena Broda
The ocean has thrown these smooth bones onto the shore and like splinters off a tree they take root in the sticky beach. Pebbles carried off by a wave emit the sound of castanets. The wind rests in the cloud formations and shells sparkle beneath the green waters. There at the bottom clouds emerge from the caves. - Has someone lit a torch? Over the top of the coral reefs fish swim whose...
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“I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious...”
– Wislawa Szymborska
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The Truth About Trees by Marcin Swietlicki
trees do not have their own holy book trees have more than enough light air and rain thin branches stretching up to heaven
the heaven of trees is green powerful fragrant the creator of trees is as green and powerful as them their creator has not devised a hell for trees
there is no sin there is no obligation it’s enough to exist rustle stretch it’s enough to grow aspire...