Translated Poems

And no water lily

And no water lily to get a grip
in the great lake of the sky
in which the heart sinks…
Who will prophesize
from the flight of airplanes,
playing in the skyline?
Swallows hug the news from many attics
to the aviator hats of beautiful pilots
cutting the clouds…
The sundown comes, beyond the mountains
the machines fall silent
The night starts a mourning
Nobody knows for whom…

Wojeciech Wencel

From home to canticle and then to the cemetery
There are three of us: asters sink into your hands
the travel pushcart lifts a sweet weight
old names gather by the well
and so time caught up to us - there is no chance to live
this lesson in eternity but with them
the line of empty jars buzzes over the precipice
a little oratory to Saint Cecilia
a little tren - prayer known by rote
the wind entangles us like the beads of a rosary
eternal rest grant unto us, O Lord,
and let perpetual light increase in us

Verbum Crucis

The blood flowed the water flowed
I know I cannot put this into words
speak for me sweet nails
with sensitive tongue long fast
which lowers our breath
over God’s passion over suffering
unsaid bread and wine
body dirty with dirt’s saliva
from which instead of bland bitterness
the reasons of all that be are born
in the open wounds the shackles of light
the song of heavenly onomastics
the world flows from nailed hands:
stand by the river home clouds
the body of the churches laugh and feast
the dream before the journey the wedding night
the breath escapes the injured feet
the faulty memory soaks into the mud
the sacrificed time matures
under the skin of the world in the sinful entrails
water and blood flows from the side
God gives us life with his son

The old meter crumbles the rhythms break
over the black stream of tears under the tree of life
but everything has its time
in the brittle cradle cap the angel of harmony sings
Lord you lift me when I fall
and wash my petrified eyes with the water of life
more patient than the light in the closed room
you are with me when I wake up and go to bed
and there is nothing beside you in this world nothing
and there is no greater love than Your love
truly there is nothing more than this and nothing changes:
the same path after the grave and the same stone

Song Seven: Hospital

Srebrzysko is a strange place: psychiatric hospital
cemetery cremation and a garbage plant
they share the space like warehouses
build for some invisible army
Achtung! the sun awakened for a dirty job
and with the quartermaster with the rest of garrison
people go to the Earth scream at the top of their lungs
or burn into ash in an iron furnace
who believed in ethereal life will end up like atheist
who hid below the floor will not find rescue
they flow with rapid stream the dark destination
the trash from the feast Nibelungs old as the world

the hospital allays overgrown with weeds
cats heat their bellies while spinning on their backs
before the cellar of the watchman who hanged himself
four days after the Polish pope was chosen
how silent: the wind murmurs in nobody’s guardhouse
der Konzentrationslager without anyone there
they could fly away at least to the fields
but they would much rather scream, drool themselves and roll over
just here under the great reflector of the sun
which will crawl into the inside through mended bars
in the cafeteria isolation room bathhouse and rooms
the pasture of black sheep: total madmen

behind the ruined fence at the end of the hospital
men catch fish in the silted water
every so often drinking rowan vodka
from the ice tea bottle they will not live longer
than ladies in underware at the shiny ads
the February is begining but there is no snow
only the sun - like always - moves slowly
looking at the balcony antennas
looking at the windows not washed since December
A of those who sit at home and those who left
with an almost imperceptible grain of sand in the mouth
to do everything they must - they will bury us all

just there are the Srebrzysko in the cemetery allays
multiplying like harpies shades of red:
purpurze violet brick-red and crimson
and the mother of fools that I everything will change
the luggage left at the empty balcony swells: the fear for a daughter after a serious accident
the call to the unit which arrived yesterday
his: Where did you wander? her: don’t fool around
and only a few steps separates us from the place
where a small Dawid Weiser fell into the ground
in a tunnel under the embankment near Wrzeszcz
what happened will not be erased

it wanders to us by a slim ray
through the nose genitals arse lips ears
it presses its poisoned knowledge about the existence
which by blood and mucus arrives at the soul
this existence is not full and knowledge-not-knowledge
we live we lose and it is done
we are swallowed by the emptiness that grew in the poems
cold rammstein melancholy pain the right knee
I am with you neighbors from the camp of nothingness
poet or a dupe with an overgrown head
we look as the sun sets without words
only to play with us tomorrow

Ode of the Sick Soul

Ode of sick soul the song of the dead body
cymbals made of bones sign

without form: the deaf hears only himself
the destroying murmur of the flame in the rotten innards

the speech that wants everything loses everything
becoming a hotbed on the dry threshing floor

the flakes of soot rise in the house of slavery
and I don’t know where i am - you are not there

Andrzej Bursa

The Foreign Languages

Is up our father smoking a pipe?
Yes my father is smoking a pipe
Tak mój ojciec pali fajkę
Repeat this sentence
it will open a window
windowtotheworld
When you will sit at the Broadway
in a bar more beautiful than Satan’s eyes
they will ask you infallibly
is your father smoking a pipe
then you will answer with a smile

Paramecium

Children are more likeable than adults
animals are more likeable than children
you say that reasoning like that I need to arrive at the fact
that paramecium is the most likeable

so what

paramecium is more likeable
than you motherfucker

Hope

If we succeed in what we undertook
and every sun we grew in the flower pots
of our intimate talks
and parochial minds
will light up the broad skyline
and we will not have to say we are geniuses

because the others will say this for us
and aureolas
the rainbow aureolas
… eh waste of one’s breath
Guys if we succeed

Then we will get drunk as fuck

Ignacy Fik

The eyes behind the horizon

The night is a duvet. The night covers our bodies tightly.
The night is warm and thick you can wrap up in it like the sea wraps the land.
You can cover yourself with its thick wrinkles to the neck.
– And only the eyes rest upon the sun: The eyes behind the horizon.

It is hard to rest in the noisy half of the light,
The rubble of Time pours into the open eyes.
All of your life you can’t close your swollen eyes,
And half-closing them constantly burns, crushes, and tires.

Because the space of light is dry and empty,
The sun: the volcano in the eggshells of curved vaults.
Ah - to puncture it one time! Let the blood drive out the lava.
And close our eyes with its thick stream!

The hand of the lava is not easy on our hungry eyes,
The sight will drive into our fingers ticks will yank out the strands
And through the threaded needle of the sight the hands of volatile comets;
We will see all the time: Time, Light and Space!

Henryk Zbierzchowski

From the worlds where harmony lives
I fall suddenly like Lucifer
To the little valley of everyday life
Where the law of numbers rules
Broken plumes…
I hurt my naked soul

Jerzy Liebert

The Sentenced Ones

They heal their lungs for years,
Blood escapes their lips,
They have fever, cough they spit
They meditate over spittoons.

And they dry slowly, human trees —
It still murmurs, whistles, sings in them
They are still able — oh the curious ones —
To look as bark beetle devours them

Your loneliness and your sundowns
Is juged by the Lord of sorrow and reward
Cheer your heart with Him.
To Him is your road — you do not come back from it
In him our common day and work
Prayer a weapon

You cannot rule Him and I do not rule Him
But going after you I also say —
Thy will be done
And so the world straightened up today
Like if angel touched us and shouted —
Smile our armor.