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Year: 2009

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Poetry

December 14 – Poetry Reading by Wisława Szymborska

To be a boxer, or not to be there
at all. O Muse, where are our teeming crowds?
Twelve people in the room, eight seats to spare
it’s time to start this cultural affair.
Half came inside because it started raining,
the rest are relatives. O Muse.
The women here would love to rant and rave,
but that’s for boxing. Here they must behave.
Dante’s Infemo is ringside nowadays.
Likewise his Paradise. O Muse.

Oh, not to be a boxer but a poet,
one sentenced to hard shelleying for life,
for lack of muscles forced to show the world
the sonnet that may make the high-school reading lists
with luck. O Muse,
O bobtailed angel, Pegasus.

In the first row, a sweet old man’s soft snore:
he dreams his wife’s alive again. What’s more,
she’s making him that tart she used to bake.
Aflame, but carefully-don’t burn his cake!
we start to read. O Muse.

Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Muzo, nie być bokserem to jest nie być wcale.
Ryczącej publiczności poskąpiłaś nam.
Dwanaście osób jest na sali,
już czas, żebyśmy zaczynali.
Połowa przyszła, bo deszcz pada,
reszta to krewni. Muzo.

Kobiety rade zemdleć w ten jesienny wieczór,
zrobią to, ale tylko na bokserskim meczu.
dantejskie sceny tylko tam.
I wniebobranie. Muzo

Nie być bokserem, być poetą,
mieć wyrok skazujący na ciężkie norwidy,
z braku muskulatury demonstrować światu
przyszłą lekturę szkolną-w najszczęśliwszym razie-
o Muzo. O Pegazie,
aniele koński.

W pierwszym rządku staruszek slodko sobie śni,
że mu żona nieboszczka z grobu wstała i
upiecze staruszkowi placek ze śliwkami.
Z ogniem, ale niewielkim, bo placek się spali,
zaczynamy czytanie. Muzo.

Poetry

December 13 – The Printer’s Error by Aaron Fogel

Fellow compositors
and pressworkers!

I, Chief Printer
Frank Steinman,
having worked fifty-
seven years at my trade,
and served five years
as president
of the Holliston
Printer’s Council,
being of sound mind
though near death,
leave this testimonial
concerning the nature
of printers’ errors.

First: I hold that all books
and all printed
matter have
errors, obvious or no,
and that these are their
most significant moments,
not to be tampered with
by the vanity and folly
of ignorant, academic
textual editors.
Second: I hold that there are
three types of errors, in ascending
order of importance:
One: chance errors
of the printer’s trembling hand
not to be corrected incautiously
by foolish professors
and other such rabble
because trembling is part
of divine creation itself.

Two: silent, cool sabotage
by the printer,
the manual laborer
whose protests
have at times taken this
historical form,
covert interferences
not to be corrected
censoriously by the hand
of the second and far
more ignorant saboteur,
the textual editor.
Three: errors
from the touch of God,
divine and often
obscure corrections
of whole books by
nearly unnoticed changes
of single letters
sometimes meaningful but
about which the less said
by preemptive commentary
the better.
Third: I hold that all three
sorts of error,
errors by chance,
errors by workers’ protest,
and errors by
God’s touch,
are in practice the
same and indistinguishable.

Therefore I,
Frank Steinman,
typographer
for thirty-seven years,
and cooperative Master
of the Holliston Guild
eight years,
being of sound mind and body
though near death
urge the abolition
of all editorial work
whatsoever
and manumission
from all textual editing
to leave what was
as it was, and
as it became,
except insofar as editing
is itself an error, and

therefore also divine.

Poetry

December 12 – This Place by Grzegorz Musiał

this place.
this is where I am growing. this is where I can sing.
this is where I try. where I lose
this place. not the table. not
the chair. not even
this house.

those people.
this is what they trust. this is where they are waiting.
these are the windows from which they keep watch over me
day after day.
a recognizable coat. a familiar walk.
this is the door I knock at every day.

this place.
deprives me utterly
of all the other places open to me
in the world.

Translated by Donald Pirie

Poetry

December 11 – About a Boy Stirring Jam by Janusz Szuber

A wooden spoon for stirring jam,
Dripping sweet tar, while in the pan
Plum magma’s bubbles blather.
For someone who can’t grasp the whole
There’s salvation in the remembered detail.
What, back then, did I know about that?
The real, hard as a diamond,
Was to happen in the indefinable
Future, and everything seemed
Only a sign of what was to come. How naïve.
Now I know inattention is an unforgivable sin
And each particle of time has an ultimate dimension.

Translated by Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough

Łyżka drewniana do mieszania powideł,
Ociekająca słodką smołą, kiedy w rondlu
Bełkoce bąblami śliwkowa magma,
I dla kogoś, kto nie może objąć całości,
Jaki taki ratunek w zapamiętanym szczególe.
Bo, ostatecznie, cóż o nich wiedziałem ?
Prawdziwe, o twardości diamentu, miało się
Przecież dopiero wydarzyć w nieokreślonej bliżej
Przyszłości i, jak mi się wydawało, wszystko dotychczasowe
Było jedynie zapowiedzią tamtego. Naiwny. Teraz wiem,
Że nieuwaga jest grzechem nie do wybaczenia
A każda drobina czasu ma wymiar ostateczny.

Poetry

December 10 – Two Countries by Naomi Shihab Nye

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that’s what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers–silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin’s secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.

Poetry

December 9 – Notes on the Art of Poetry by Dylan Thomas

I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on
in the world between the covers of books,
such sandstorms and ice blasts of words,,,
such staggering peace, such enormous laughter,
such and so many blinding bright lights,, ,
splashing all over the pages
in a million bits and pieces
all of which were words, words, words,
and each of which were alive forever
in its own delight and glory and oddity and light.

Poetry

December 8 – Sonnet XLV (I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair) by Pablo Neruda

Don’t go far off, not even for a day
Don’t go far off, not even for a day,
Because I don’t know how to say it – a day is long
And I will be waiting for you, as in
An empty station when the trains are
Parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don’t leave me, even for an hour, because then
The little drops of anguish will all run together,
The smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
Into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve
On the beach, may your eyelids never flutter
Into the empty distance. Don’t LEAVE me for
A second, my dearest, because in that moment you’ll
Have gone so far I’ll wander mazily
Over all the earth, asking, will you
Come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

Translation unattributed

No estés lejos de mí­ un solo dí­a, porque cómo,
porque, no sé decirlo, es largo el dí­a,
y te estaré esperando como en las estaciones
cuando en alguna parte se durmieron los trenes.

No te vayas por una hora porque entonces
en esa hora se juntan las gotas del desvelo
y tal vez todo el humo que anda buscando casa
venga a matar aíºn mi corazón perdido.

Ay que no se quebrante tu silueta en la arena,
ay que no vuelen tus párpados en la ausencia:
no te vayas por un minuto, bienamada,

porque en ese minuto te habrás ido tan lejos
que yo cruzaré toda la tierra preguntando
si volverás o si me dejarás muriendo.

Poetry,

December 7 – Pearl Harbor’s Child by Linda Brown

I was born a week after Pearl Harbor
into a crib with an air raid siren.
It wailed nightly from the elm outside
until I went rigid as a hypnotist’s steel board,
too scared–even in my mother’s arms–to cry.

We moved cross-country when I was two
so my father could build the air strip
at Whidbey Island. There I was jumped on
by Zombie Doggy, a big red Irish setter
who loved me so much he knocked me down.
When they practiced firing on the artillery range,
Mother had to drive me to the other side of the island
because I screamed & cried and cried.

There are two things infants are afraid of:
falling and loud noises. This was my baptism
into touch and sound–being knocked flat
on my back by a dog licking my face,
the rage of artillery shells and sirens.

So much fear. What to do for it
but become a poet? Still afraid
of being knocked on my ass by love,
still living in a world at war.

Found at Poets Against War.

Poetry

December 6 – Who is a Poet by Tadeusz Różewicz

a poet is one who writes verses
and one who does not write verses
a poet is one who throws off fetters
and one who puts fetters on himself

a poet is one who believes
and one who cannot bring himself to believe

a poet is one who has told lies
and one who has been told lies

one who has been inclined to fall
and one who raises himself

a poet is one who tries to leave
and one who cannot leave

Translated by Magnus Krynski and Robert Maguire

poetą jest ten który pisze wiersze
i ten który wierszy nie pisze

poetą jest ten który zrzuca więzy
i ten który więzy sobie nakłada

poetą jest ten który wierzy
i ten który uwierzyć nie może

poetą jest ten który kłamał
i ten którego okłamano

poetą jest ten co ma usta
i ten który połyka prawdę

ten który upadał
i ten który się podnosi

poetą jest ten który odchodzi
i ten który odejść nie może

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