4 Poems by Polish Writer Tadeusz Slawek in Translation

Introductory Note:

Like dead leaves, floating on the surface of memory, Tadeusz Sławek’s poems inhabit a memory of love, lovers and the bridge across time that the poet seeks to cross into, stay and remind us of- here then is a poet, who talks to us through the entangled touch of humans, trees and their reflected shadows in water. The Bangalore Review is proud to present the translated poems of Prof. Tadeusz Sławek, from his poetry volume titled Staw -through the warm and detailed voice of the translators of the Femina Hodierna Collective.

Sławek is a Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Silesia, and between 1996 and 2002 he served as the President of this university. Staw was published in 1982 by the publishing house Wydawnictwo Literackie in Poland. Sławek’s most important publications include: The Typewriter. On Jacques Derrida’s Theory of Literature (with Tadeusz Rachwał) (1992); Calling of Jonah. Problems of Literary Voice (with Donald Wesling) (1995); Man, World, Friendship in the Works of William Blake (2001); Revelations of Gloucester (2003); Grasping. H.D. Thoreau and the Community of the World (2009); Reversing the World. Sentences from Shakespeare (2012); Departing (2015); Never without the Rest. On the Urgency of Incompleteness (2018).

The poems from the volume Staw are a manifestation of human connection with nature, which brings to mind eco-poetics. Sławek invites the reader on a journey to the origins, to the pond, to the roots (of a tree) and engages us in an intimate conversation with ourselves, to which nature is the only witness.

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I.

Getting closer to you
I will build a bridge over a vast indifferent river
—but there is no river anymore.

Looking at you
I prepare words, which are meant to lock you up
—but you are long gone from the cage.

There is only a difficult road to you;
I draw water from the stream
I ask after you—
the stream doesn’t know or doesn’t want to say.

I ask a stone which direction I should go;
It looks at me as if he doesn’t understand.
I wasted a whole day talking to him.
He taught me a lot.
I know now that you truly are when you are not here;

that’s when my memory quietens,
only dead leaves float on its surface.
Clouds that float in the water overlap every matter.
Then you are neither a human,
nor a shore, nor a tree reflected in the water;
you are the water of the pond, which reflects humans, trees and shores
—not being any of them herself.

I can touch you and so I touch humans, trees and the shore
while not entangled in their sly nets;
at most, they will gently wrinkle their transparent skin

and move further in a glow of floating circles
having my arm as an axis, elbow-deep.
That’s what you are—
you are a water surface that changes everything,
but does not change herself;
I know now that you truly are when you are not here.

II.

The tree sinks into the water.
To meet you, I will walk on a thin footbridge,
though it bends and creaks
it won’t crack.
Poor are its edges
but its middle
nests my feet and allows my legs to move forward.
Don’t bury the pond with stones, don’t throw
yourself in, reaching for the depth,
which runs away with an animal cry.
Stand still and watch as halfway between you and the depth
you emerge, pure
freed from yourself.
If you don’t desert yourself,
you shall never see your own face.

III.

I don’t wish to meet you like life,
which I watch from the outside:
stone against other stones,
house against other houses,
love against other loves.
I don’t wish to wrap you with a net of what you think of me.
I don’t wish to meet you like life,
so as not to lock you in the prison of my body
and let you out for a daily walk through my thoughts.
No, I don’t wish to meet you like life.
I wish to meet you like freedom
which would take us beyond ourselves,
like an open door, we would be for each other,
neither hospitably holding up
nor rudely telling to leave,
but welcoming those who enter,
and who gaze at each other before they leave,
Let’s be a pond to each other,
where movement becomes deceit,
though a pond is no stranger to the nature of the truth.
The trees on the shore froze,
in the water, they breathe,
wrinkling their faces like fish do—
which of these movements is true?
The trees on the shore yelp for a longer watch,
in the water, they stay silent, patiently, like sleeping babies—
which of these sounds is true?

Lonely-legged the trees on the shore remained,
into the dark water, a dream of themselves they sent,
but between the dream and the dreamer
the ice left a barrier of cold reflection—
which of these worlds is true?

So, be like water to me,
for I wish to meet you like freedom
which knows that once the thirst is quenched
no need to think of water anymore.

THE CITY OF TRUST

The city of trust is not composed of God’s paths,
where worshippers tread,
nor of paths we take to follow
our friends, colleagues, the dead.

The paths of the city of trust are always singular,
forking only into stretched and open arms.

In the apartments of the city of trust nobody asks the question “why,”
because everybody knows that trust is true only
if it shows up not to stay but to go away.
That’s why the word “truth,” used by many nations as
a crappy horse-boy, ineptly removing horseshit
was replaced by a touch of two hands,
which serves only two people
allowing them to see the effects of their deeds.

In the space between two hands, open
to the falling rain,
the city of trust was built.

In the city of trust, the word “truth” has been sentenced to long
months and years of non-existence,
but take a sniff and, in your nostrils, you’ll smell the sharp scent of the truth,
whose trunks and logs have been burned, to leave nothing but the fragrance
cruising the streets in gold clouds of smoke.

Just as high in the sky
the winter moon,
flutters its only wing.

The fringed cloud of reason and words cannot contain the truth,
which is a fish in the thin streams of hands.
In the city of trust, the great trunks of truth have been burned,
to line the earth with fertile ash;
the knotted branches of truth have been burned,
to make all categories ephemeral;
the tiny sprouts of truth have been burned, so that nobody
could weave a wreath of wisdom;
the tree of truth has been burned, because only few
were protected by its shadow,
because it has been learned that the truth belongs neither to me,
nor to you, but that it belongs to a place b e y o n d us,
in an empty space, in the sharp scent,
as if, standing on the shore, we are looking at the white, salty sea,
so that, when the time will have come to die,
rather than cease to breathe, we can breathe wider.

It’s no good when the truth is within you,
and it’s bad when the truth is in me;
the truth belongs i n–b e t w e e n us,
for its bliss lies in disappearing.
How beautifully wood smells after the rain.
Is it the smell of the wood,
or the rain?

APPOLONIUS VISITS THE HOUSES

1. House of the Harlots

Purple upholstered walls rise
above the body of Omnia,
where I took the place of dozens of sailors,
to tell her in the morning
“I am far away.”
I am Omnia.
The wing of high flights.
On me, I patiently carry
desires.
Each drains a hole in me
and after winter sleep
I am the food for the little creatures.

2. House of the Politician

With a raised collar of the doorframe,
with the hat of the dusk pulled over his eyes,
door handle clamped on the butt of the gun,
I guard a certain little liar.
I throw my lot in with his,
“I am far away.”
I have no children.
I am among the one hundred million voters.
I endlessly hunt myself.

3. House of God

I am the history of a certain rebellion.
Pine and cedar were used to make the distant goal closer
So that one could climb up to heaven

But the captain hanging from the mast
reads the map in vain—
only bloody pulp in front of the eyes.
No winds move the sails of words.
I remain faithful to him.
I am the number. They say
a certain amount of failure,
alchemically melted
into triumph.
Put your hands together.
Think, how far from the tip of the fingers
to the toes.

4. House by the Hour

On the first floor, the sun rises later,
let us respect the absence of light.
A strange smell in the mattress,
it hasn’t been aired here since last summer.
When they open the doors,
there is only a bed left, a white rhinoceros.
Do not touch its skin
because its whiteness will wrinkle nervously.
Come in.
Do not exceed the indicated time.
Turn off the light when leaving.

ANATOMY LESSON

The borders between human bodies have been shut.
The mind crouching behind the trench of infinite flexibility
refused to act as a mediator between the limbs.
Both sides shot words at each other.
The body was plowed by furrows of exclamation marks,
the mind stood at attention,
only commands were shouted.
There are days where every incident of peace
evokes a sense of distress.

That’s not fair. Let’s avoid unnecessary comments:
now I remove the skin—
and I read out a bloody war of finger against a knife,
here, a small crater left after the explosion which pulled us out
into the world,
and there, a disaster of a childhood disease
as if I were running my fingers over tree rings.
I cut the larynx—
with no effort, we will see a forest of high pitches,
nests of bullfinch vowels
crows of consonants pecking scraps of air
scattered by lungs;
just ornithology.
I trephine the skull—
a snake, until now crammed in a cage
and turning muscle strength into words, crawls out,
no need to be afraid—it is not dangerous,
over the years it has been taught discipline,
it can even bend into figures of
syllogisms.
Legs—
I strip from the skin,
and see infinite paths
along the trunk of the bone
paths which grow like a tree.
I cut off one branch and the spark explodes,
small at first,
but as I prune the dead tree suckers,
the fire crackles like a bush.
Remember the latent fire of space
that lingers in the legs.
Hands—
same as legs—they are an extension of thoughts.
The wandering of thoughts is often only a
movement of the fingers.
Ergo, there lie many notes hidden in
the hand lines which the tongue
cannot read out because there’s no key.
So hands are the missing parts of the
cerebral hemispheres.
You can see it best when philosophers rest their heads
on their hands,
there is less gesture in it,
and more philosophy than we can ever imagine.

So if there is any truth at all,
it is only you who constitute it
and so do your bodies.