WORLD POETRY almanc 2011 Monogolia
Editor-in-Chief Hadaa Sendoo
180 Poets
100 Countries
POLAND (3 poets):
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Some People
Some people fleeing some other people.
In some country under the sun
and some clouds.
They leave behind some of their everything,
sown fields, some chickens, dogs,
mirrors in which fire now sees itself reflected.
On their backs are pitchers and bundles,
the emptier, the heavier from one day to the next.
Taking place stealthily is somebody’s stopping,
and in the commotion, somebody’s bread somebody’s snatching
and a dead child somebody’s shaking.
In front of them some still not the right way,
nor the bridge that should be
over a river strangely rosy.
Around them, some gunfire, at times closer, at times farther off,
and, above, a plane circling somewhat.
Some invisibility would come in handy,
some grayish stoniness,
or even better, non-being
for a little or a long while.
Something else is yet to happen, only where and what?
Someone will head toward them, only when and who,
in how many shapes and with what intentions?
Given a choice,
maybe he will choose not to be the enemy and
leave them with some kind of life.
Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak
Poems from KINNA READS, April 4, 2011
TADEUSZ ROZEWICZ
so what if it’s a dream
justifies nothing
explains nothing
renounces nothing
encompasses no whole
fulfills no hope
creates no new rules of the game
takes no part in merriment
has a defined space
it must occupy
if it’s not esoteric
if it’s not original
if it doesn’t awe
apparently it’s as it should be
it obeys its own imperative
its own capabilities
and limitations
it loses against itself
it can neither take the place of
nor be replaced by any other
open to everyone
devoid of mystery
it has many goals
it will never achieve
Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak
Poems from Ron Slate, January 23, 2011
KRYSTYNA LENKOWSKA
Wise Instinct
It says that the world has beginning and end.
Like this clearing.
I stand in the forest's gate. I don't enter.
I've entered it once.
The dog returns full of smells, with madness in his eyes.
He has it all over.
I carry colors and shapes inside.
A multi-storied album of shades. I don't open it.
I've opened it once.
And now I carry it like a bundled child.
I take it everywhere. Everywhere.
Wise instinct knows the meaning of unnecessary ardor.
A deep bow, inhaling, the trophy of the day.
And a plastic bottle in the dog's mouth.
Ode to Snow
You fall like everything else on this planet
You come from silence
Where we also come from.
You repose against freezing time and hard earth
Deer leave traces over you
The dog falls into you up to his ears with such obviousness
In his eyes as if he had understood.
In Slocina in the Carpathian foothills you’re the same
As in Turkish Kars
Herodot’s legend.
Geometry on glass
A glass on the road.
They crush our fragile bodies
In your vitreous splendor.
Under you love, death, and trash
Lightly patted.
Fragments of rockets from Baykonur fall on your head for us
And you unshakable equilibrist lie
Supine in the Altai mountains.
My white idealist.
Krakow—Warsaw West
I feel the greatest longing at train stations
in angular waiting rooms
on dim platforms
and when the train pulls out and passes the backs of houses
the city’s cesspool the other side of walls
the pitch-black yards the rickety fences
the unfulfilled garden plots.
I long for places and people left behind
for the way they could have been for me and are for others
I even long for those I have never met
who still belong irrevocably
to my past.
Translated by Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough
The poems from “Eve’s Choice” by Krystyna Lenkowska