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Since the envoys had brought news of the arrival of the Emperor, Bolesław’s kingdom had been overwhelmed by an all-encompassing state of commotion. Aside from the settlers living deep within the deepest forests, there was probably no one who did not, in some way or other, (...)
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8
The phones are always going wrong, so my parents aren’t upset when there’s no dialling tone. They’re at the fortieth birthday party of a female friend from their class at high school. They say they’re going downstairs to the phone booth for a (...)
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Halina PoświatowskaA Story for a Friend
Halina Poswiatowska was an exceptional woman and an exceptional writer.
From the age of ten, she had severe heart problems. After a spectacular heart operation, which she underwent in the United States when she was twenty-three, she returned to health - though only for a short time. Words that occur frequently in her love poems (like "heart" and "pain") had very literal meaning for her. Her poetry thus oscillates in a very characteristic tension between metaphoric and physiological interpretations.
Poswiatowska's life and her poetry have become symbols of the eternal antinomies between the timelessness of art and the ephemerality of life. Although she did not have, it would seem, any choice, she led her life between these oppositions to the very end.
The memoir (Novel for a Friend), which is dedicated to an unknown friend, a poet, further testifies to the exceptionality of this writer's work.
***
why have I washed my breasts
and combed each hair one by one
before the narrow mirror
my hands are empty
and my bed
the night's thin pocketknife
cut my wedding band open
like a halfmoon it dangles
under the appletree pregnant with buds
I struggle tussle
my starched shirt
blown big with the wind
my belly is a smooth pond
breasts - bubbling water
to be soothed - solaced - caressed
the light of day drunk with languor
will find my scorched lips
and reluctant and unwilling
mistily kiss them - and leave
Keep in Mind
if you die
I won't put on a lilac dress
won't buy, colored wreaths
with whispering wind in the ribbons
none of that
none
the hearse will come - will come
the hearse will go - will go
I'll stand at the window - I'll look
wave my hand
flutter my handkerchief
bid farewell
alone in that window
and in summer
in crazy May
I will lie down on the grass
warm grass
and with my hands will touch your hair
and with my lips will touch a bee's pelt
prickly and beautiful
liek your smile
like dusk
later it will be
silver - golden
perhaps golden and only red
for that dusk
that wind
which whispers love into grasses
stubbornly whispers love
will not allow me to rise
and go
so simply
to my cursed deserted house
Translated by Maya Peretz
A Story for a Friend
On the ocean, my friend, the wind is blowing and rain is falling. The wind blows strongest at the bow of the ship. It throws your hair back and plucks at the loose folds of your clothing. Sliced open by the sharp bow, the gray waves are left foaming and angry at the stern. I come here every day regardless of he cold and the rain. I stand at the foot of the highest mast and watch. The blase emigrants fill the ship's bar, lifting glasses with colorful drinks in them, playing cards. The deck chairs that they paid for stand empty under the shelter of the upper deck, while the blankets, folded into cubes, soak up dampness and salt. I sit here every day for long hours, listening to the cries of the birds. They wander in the wake of the ship, with their strong white wings braced against the anxious rocking. The birds' wings are made of tempered steel and their bills of pure gold. Their bills are accurate in searching out food for the tireless wings. Why do they keep swimming through the air? Why do they rip the navy-blue surface of the water with their bills?
My friend, I ask the birds who wander in the wake of the ship, struggling blindly towards a new shore. They shouted - their shout is full of pain and full of longing. When I listened to that shout, I understood that longing is an element of nature, like the earth or the wind. It was longing that compelled man to hollow out a tree trunk and push it into the water. It was longing that fitted wings to a ship. Why did man wander from one land to another through the hostile, rolling water? Do you say that he did so for bread, for cloth, for spices and scented oils? I will tell you that this is not true. The most beautiful cloth and brightest metal are infinitely less of an incentive than the tiniest particle of the longing that stretches a bird's wings. At the end of their journey the seagulls find only a jumble of rocks, just like the one that they left. Yet they cross the oceans for the sake of those rocks. For those rocks, they steadfastly follow the wake of the ship, snatching at the sun and wind with their open wings.
And if you tell me, friend, that the seagulls are after the refuse dumped over the side of the ship each day, and that the only purpose of their indefatigable flight is to satisfy their hunger, then I will answer you that longing is the sharpest of hungers, and inevitably brings death to those who are not nourished. Have you already forgotten why I crossed the ocean twice?
Translated by William Brand
Halina POSWIATOWSKA (1935 - 1967) - poet; personal, reflective-amorous lyrics that are a witness to the dramatic struggleagainst death.
English / Polish edition by Wydawnictwo Literackie
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