Two Poems by Wislawa Szymborska

I just found out via The New York Times today that Polish poet and 1996 Nobel prizewinner Wislawa Szymborska had passed away.

I had been lucky enough to buy a copy of her book, View With A Grain of Sand: Selected Poems, several years ago at a local bookstore. Later, I found that my sister also owned a copy of her Poems: New and Collected, which contained basically the same poems as in my book, but including newer works.

A former member of the Polish Communist Party, Szymborska later turned away from her early "Stalinist" work. She was also an essayist and translator. Shortly after winning the Nobel Prize, she said in a New York Times interview that although "life crosses politics... my poems are strictly not political. They are more about people and life." Many of her poems that I have read deal with the aftermath of war, of people rising from its ashes. Her words can be stark, but manage to convey hopefulness and sympathy.

I wanted to share here two of her poems, which I enjoyed reading:

CAT IN AN EMPTY APARTMENT

Die -- you can't do that to a cat.
Since what can a cat do
In an empty apartment?
Climb up the walls?
Rub up against the furniture?
Nothing seems different here,
but nothing is the same.
Nothing has been moved,
but there's more space.
At at nighttime no lamps are lit.

Footsteps on the staircase,
but they're new ones.
The hand that puts fish in the saucer
has changed, too.

Something doesn't start
at its usual time.
Something doesn't happen
as it should.
Someone was always, always here
Then suddenly disappeared,
And stubbornly stays disappeared.

Every closet has been examined.
Every shelf has been explored.
Excavations under the carpet turned up nothing.
A commandment was even broken,
papers scattered everywhere.
What remains to be done.
Just sleep and wait.

Just wait till he turns up,
Just let him show his face.
Will he ever get a lesson
on what not to do with a cat.
Sidle towards him
as if unwilling
and ever so slow
on visibly offended paws,
and no leaps or squeals at least to start.

NOTHING TWICE

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 offered only 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,
from "View with a Grain of Sand", Harcourt Brace & Co., 1995)

There are more translations of Szymborska's poems online on the Polish-American Network, Poets.org, and the State University of New York (Buffalo).

Poems by Tomas Transtromer

Last October 6th, I woke up to the announcement that the Nobel Committee had awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature to Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer. He bested other luminaries in the running such as Syrian poet Adonis and Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami (even long shot Bob Dylan). Considered Sweden's greatest living poet, Transtromer's work has been translated into 50 languages. Ironically, despite being a best-seller in Sweden, Transtromer is not as well-known in other parts of the world. He recently turned 80, and continues to write poetry.

I am posting three of his poems that I like here, and am as of now actively looking for any of his poetry collections. The New York Observer says a number of Transtromer's poem collections in English will certainly be reprinted following his win. Wikipedia also lists his published books in English translation. As a layman I find it easier to approach Nobel Prizewinning works in poetry since short but complete samples are available online for immediate appreciation. I hope you enjoy the three I've selected:

THE TREE AND THE SKY
(translated by Robin Fulton)

There's a tree walking around in the rain,
it rushes past us in the pouring grey.
It has an errand. It gathers life
out of the rain like a blackbird in an orchard.

When the rain stops, so does the tree.
There it is, quiet on clear nights
waiting as we do for the moment
when the snowflakes blossom in space.


APRIL AND SILENCE
(translated by Robin Fulton)

Spring lies desolate.
The velvet-dark ditch
crawls by my side
without reflections.

The only thing that shines
is yellow flowers.

I am carried in my shadow
like a violin
in its black case.

The only thing I want to say
glitters out of reach
like the silver
in a pawnbroker’s.


THE COUPLE
(translated by Robert Bly)

They switch off the light and its white shade
glimmers for a moment before dissolving
Like a tablet in a glass of darkness. Then up.
The hotel walls rise into the black sky.
The movements of love have settled, and they sleep
but their most secret thought meet as when
two colors meet and flow into each other
on the wet paper of a schoolboy's painting.
It is dark and silent. But the town has pulled closer
tonight. With quenched windows. The houses have approached.
They stand close up in a throng, waiting,
a crowd whose faces have no expressions.

All poems copyright Tomas Transtromer. Many thanks to John Baker, Bloodaxe Blogs, and Transtromer.net for texts of these poems.

Some Feel Rain, by Joanna Klink

SOME FEEL RAIN

by Joanna Klink

Some feel rain. Some feel the beetle startle
in its ghost-part when the bark
slips. Some feel musk. Asleep against
each other in the whiskey dark, scarcely there.
When it falls apart, some feel the moondark air
drop its motes to the patch-thick slopes of
snow. Tiny blinkings of ice from the oak,
a boot-beat that comes and goes, the line of prayer
you can follow from the dusking wind to the snowy owl
it carries. Some feel sunlight
well up in blood-vessels below the skin
and wish there had been less to lose.
Knowing how it could have been, pale maples
drowsing like a second sleep above our temperaments.
Do I imagine there is any place so safe it can't be
snapped? Some feel the rivers shift,
blue veins through soil, as if the smokestacks were a long
dream of exhalation. The lynx lets its paws
skim the ground in snow and showers.
The wildflowers scatter in warm tints until
the second they are plucked. You can wait
to scrape the ankle-burrs, you can wait until Mercury
the early star underdraws the night and its blackest
districts. And wonder. Why others feel
through coal-thick night that deeply colored garnet
star. Why sparring and pins are all you have.
Why the earth cannot make its way towards you.

From Poems.com

Poem: Thanks

From Poets.org:

THANKS
by W. S. Merwin


Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is


[Many thanks to Mai Tatoy, who posted this on Facebook in this,
one of our nation's darkest hours.]

The Blessing of the Old Woman, The Tulip and The Dog

The Blessing of the Old Woman, The Tulip and The Dog is an interesting poem by Alicia Suskin Ostriker which can be found here, on Poetry Daily. Click on the photo to go to the poem's link directly. I love its simplicity.

Waking

Holding your heart to my ear
I slept, and dreamed of swimming in a sea
Salted by sixteen million unnamed living colors.
I reveled in the refracted sunlight, in the
Pleasant, muted low roll of waves.

You’d think sound has no weight
But it does, on the second hand of a clock
Ticking its way to rude, real daylight.
The snooze button is set for a bit more
Time to float around inside my head, enough
Time to surface gently, to slide my heart
From the crook of your arms carefully back
Into its own breast pocket, and my self
Back behind my eyes.

All the sounds of traffic have been
Singing a raucous welcome a while now.
From the mosquito to the barking dog, to the
Frying bacon sputtering in fat, to the neighbor
Sweeping her yard, happily singing off-key,
To the mobile phones of the world. It is Saturday.
There's the pied piper bell of the ice cream man,
And children running, running.

Outside, our butter sun is coaxing leafy
Transformations. My morning voice loses its croak.
You pluck my smile to stir into your cup
Full of the liquid blackness between stars.
The repeated peals of silver against porcelain
Have a satisfying rhythm. You swallow love whole,
Your Adam’s apple bobbing in approval.


Copyright 2009 Mona Caccam
(for TDM, after reading Margaret Atwood)

Flying Inside Your Own Body

Link

FLYING INSIDE YOUR OWN BODY
by Margaret Atwood

Your lungs fill & spread themselves,
wings of pink blood, and your bones
empty themselves and become hollow.
When you breathe in you'll lift like a balloon
and your heart is light too & huge,
beating with pure joy, pure helium.
The sun's white winds blow through you,
there's nothing above you,
you see the earth now as an oval jewel,
radiant & seablue with love.
It's only in dreams you can do this.
Waking, your heart is a shaken fist,
a fine dust clogs the air you breathe in;
the sun's a hot copper weight pressing straight
down on the thin pink rind of your skull.
It's always the moment just before gunshot.
You try & try to rise but you cannot.

-------

Margaret Atwood speaks the language of my head best. I try to go on anyway.

Other poems by Margaret Atwood here.

Shadow In The Morning

I was on this chair
When day was briefly night. There was
An ephemeral sense of regret
That I was not taking photographs for
The next century, or for grandchildren
I don't know I will have. No matter;

Outside it was
Just another typhoon morning
Clouded but still, as if all of Manila
Were in its eye. I watched the sun
Obscured over Iwo Jima, online
Over Youtube. The Japanese newsman
Excitedly punctured the silence and
The darkness that fell with
Words for those on chairs like I,
Not on the same island.

Fortune smiled, and the sky
Cleared over our roof. There was
A moment through dark film where
It became real for us, and not again
Until another century, another humid shadow,
Another generation or two.

Copyright 2009 Mona Caccam

Awaiting Rain

(for Preston Mark Stone who, in our Usenet days, kept encouraging me to keep writing)

Clouds stingy with rain gather over the restless city.
The monsoon is nearly upon us,
But not quite. The weather is a terrible
Tease, the odd drumbeats of thunder signifying
Nothing, yet. For an interminable while,
We are hostages to this pregnant gunmetal sky.

More than grasses have died,
Where there was no shade or where
There has spread an unintended fire.
Dry throats plague all travelers;
The roads need their dust tamped down.
The northern winds are late in coming, but
They can banish the still air that imprisons us
And this parched country. We quiver
With impatience, waiting
For the wash of water.

How reluctantly rain falls,
Flashing us now and then
With a lightning sneer,
As if we owed a debt to heaven
Impossible to repay.

We need the rising smell of
Moistened earth to call out the cicadas,
Whose song is the sound
Of the monsoon announcing that
A cool twilight has finally come.

25 May 2005

Copyright Pomona Caccam. All rights reserved.

Personal Geographic

Joy that was, the time
When I was blind, and blinded
Times over to all that warning senses
And the known world's boundaries
Had ever taught, that plain sight
Never could, completely.
And so I embarked to diligently map
The rough terrain of your
Uncharted country.

I had fallen and drowned, and was
Wrapped in the winding sheet of
Love which was a kind of death
From all life's tiresome etiquette,
Yet was reborn for a time
To walk in beauty and in music,
In the book for whose pages
We continually hungered.

I can never travel there again,
Where once we walked invisible
Among the real lives of others, though
Time and its easy way of
Erasing the paths of previous explorations
Reluctantly allows me every
Ghost of you.

It is another life to which I have
Awakened. The protocols of duty,
Their continuance, now consume me,
What was left of the fires
Even we could not extinguish.

After taking stock of all
My memory's possessions,
I grant the braille of your lips to be
The most indelible, having read them
Repeatedly, then, with all
My exposed and secret skins.

23 January 1995

Copyright Pomona Caccam. All rights reserved.