Polish poets

[NIRIANA]

Lyrical Conversation
by Konstanty Ildefons Galczynski

- Tell me how you love me.
- I’ll tell you
- So?
- I love you in the sunshine. And by the candlelight
I love you in a hat and a barrette.
On windy road and at the concert.
In lilacs and in birches, in raspberries and in maples.
And when you sleep. And when you work concentrated.
And when you elegantly break the egg -
even when you drop the spoon.
In a taxi. In a car. Without exception.
At the end of the road. And at the beginning.
And when you part your hair with a comb.
In danger. And on the merry-go-around.
In the sea waves. In the mountains. In wellies. And barefoot.
Today. Yesterday. And tomorrow. By day and night.
And at Springtime when swallows arrive.
- And how do you love me in the Summer?
- Like context of Summer.
- And in Autumn, when clouds and blue moods arrive?
- Even then, when you loose your umbrellas.
-And when the Winter silvers frame of our windows?
- At Winter I love you like happy fire.
Close to your heart. Close to it.
And behind our windows, snow. And black crows in it.

[NIRIANA]

A Song On the End of the World
by Czeslaw Milosz

Translated by Anthony Milosz


On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world will there be,
No other end of the world will there be.

[NIRIANA]

Nothing twice by Wieslawa Szymborska

Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,
if you're the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.


No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with exactly the same kisses.

One day, perhaps, some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.

With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.


Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

[cpdhuet]

Niriana, These are good poems, but I wonder how much is lost in the translation. The sounds of the words in a language has a lot to do with the success of a poem. A translation can only approximate.
CPD