Nagła jasność
Droga pani Schubert, pamięta pani tę noc, kiedy rozbierała
mnie pani ze słów? Ostrożnie, powoli, aby nie uszkodzić
krawędzi ciemności. Wszystko wtedy zabiegało o nas:
mroczne laboratoria szczęścia, wilgotne podziemia Edgara
Poe, tajne służby iluminatów. A my baliśmy się tylko jednego:
ciężkiego zapalenia światła, choroby, podczas której nagła
jasność mogłaby nas zabić.
The Sudden Clear
Dear Madam Schubert, do you recall the night when you
peeled off all my words? Carefully, slowly, so as not to
disturb the edge of darkness. Now all sought our favour:
dark laboratories of contentment, damp vaults of Edgar Poe
and secret police of the illuminati. But we had just one fear –
the blinding fever of light, an illness during which the sudden
clear could have meant our end.
Krople do oczu
W ich kierunku
Przesuwa się czoło lodowca.
Zanosi się na mroźną miłość.
Kruchy czas pod którym pęka kra.
Oni jak dwa sople.
Skuci ze sobą lodem.
Ale nadchodzi marzec.
Pochodnia słońca.
I z tej miłości tylko
krople do oczu.
Two Drops
Towards them
moves the head of an iceberg.
Ahead bodes a freezing love.
A brittle time when the ice cracks.
Like two stalactites.
Cuffed together ice to ice.
But March is drawing near.
The sun’s flaming torch.
And from this love but
two eye drops.
Przepaść
Odwiedziny umarłych
wypadają zawsze
w niefortunnych godzinach.
Właśnie wychodzimy do kina.
Na dyskotekę. Do supermarketu.
A oni przynoszą fragmenty
murów. Kawałki blachy.
Zwinięte w bólu druty.
I mówią zakłopotani:
Śmierć to przecież samo życie...
I co z tym zrobić?
Rozbieramy się.
Robimy kawę.
Wyciągamy butelkę bourbona
i patrzymy sobie
prosto
w przepaść.
Precipice
Visits from the dead
always come
at inopportune times.
We’re about to go to the cinema.
The discotheque. To the supermarket.
And they bring fragments
of walls. Fragments of tin.
Rolled in painful barbed wire.
And they say in a worried tone:
But death is life itself...
But what is to be done?
We hang up our coats.
Make coffee.
Take a bottle of bourbon
and both look
straight
into the precipice.
Bezdomny wiersz
Bezdomny wiersz włóczy się
po ciemnej materii papieru.
Niczyj. Autor pozostawił go
na łasce losu. Sierota słów.
Czasem
wiersze są jak porzucone psy
które szczekają na poezję.
Homeless Poem
A homeless poem meanders
across the dark of paper.
No one’s. The author left it
to the whims of fate. Orphan to words.
At times
poems are like abandoned dogs
that bark at poetry.
Bio
Kraków-born Ewa Lipska is one of Poland’s pre-eminent writers and a major figure in European literature. During the ’eighties she worked as editor for the publishing house Wydawnictwo Literackie and in the ’nineties she was head of the Polish Cultural Institute in Vienna. She has most often been associated with the Polish “New Wave” of poets, the so-called “Generation of ’68.” Ewa Lipska, who also writes for the stage and written poetry for music, has received numerous awards including, for example, the 1973 Kościelski Fund Award (Geneva), the 1979 Robert Graves PEN Club Award, the 1995 Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award (New York), Poland’s 2011 Gdynia Literary Award, and Italy’s 2014 International Ipazia Award.
Amongst her more recent and provocative works, released annually since 2001 by the Kraków publisher Wydawnictwo Literackie, are Sklepy zoologiczne [Pet Shops], Uwaga: stopień [Watch Your Step], Ja [“I”], Gdzie indziej [Somewhere Else], Drzazga [Splinters], and Pomarańcza Newtona [Newton’s Orange] which figure in the selection of her work, The New Century, tr. Robin Davidson & E.E. Nowakowska (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2009). This was preceded by Poet? Criminal? Madman? tr. Barbara Plebanek & Tony Howard (London: Forest Books, 1991) as well as Holy Order of Tourists, tr. R.J. Reisner (Stockholm: Ars Interpress, 2006) and succeeded by her inclusion in Scattering in the Dark: A New Anthology of Polish Female Poets, ed. & tr. Karen Kovacik (New York: White Pine Press, 2016). Her international stature is signalled by translations of her work not only into English, but also into more than a dozen other languages. Published in 2009, her non-linear novel Sefer was translated into English by Barbara Bogoczek & Tony Howard (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2012).
Notes
Works are republished here with permission of the author and translated by Ryszard Reisner who was responsible for a limited bi-lingual edition of Droga Pani Szubert / Dear Madam Schubert (Poznan: Ryszard J. Reisner, 2011).