On Polish Christmas in the Notre Dame Cathedral,and Ladies, and Cherries, and Music Boxes

The Cathedral floats up 

above  my leopard prints and faux fur

its stones polished by time 

There was a surprise waiting for me at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris this November. After I waited in a long line in the rain, with colorful umbrellas and a watchful eye of fatigue-clad soldiers with machine guns, the clock struck one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gPa4eWk8Sg (read about it in the previous post, Thanksgiving in Paris).

Then, inside the stone monument defying the passage of time, I saw the stained glass windows, the breathtaking heights of the main nave.  I walked around and listened to the music, swirling beneath blues and reds of the stained-glass windows: I heard the Kyrie Eleison, Christ Have Mercy, Lord Have Mercy: https://youtu.be/2ZsOBsT-pwo

Finally, a  medieval Alleluia filled the air.... I walked around the back of the main nave, from one stained-glass window chapel to the next.

Why "stained"-glass?

There are no stains on the rubies and cobalts

of Notre Dame air

Is the twirling ribbon

of stone embroidered with more finesse

than the lead-framed glass?

See more pictures on the Picasa Web Album:

 https://picasaweb.google.com/Maja.Trochimczyk/NotreDameCathedralInParis2015

And here it was, my delightful surprise. A tinfoil and paper monument of massive proportions: Szopka Krakowska, the Nativity Scene in a fantastic scenery of multi-towered Castle or Gothic Cathedral as envisioned by folk artists from Krakow, Poland.  The minuscule Nativity scene in the heart of the building, surrounded by Polish folk dancers, and characters from folk tales. Pan Twardowski on his rooster, flying to the moon... Angels, three Kings, everyone...

I find Poland in Paris

bright tinfoil towers of a Nativity Scene 

among the grey stones of Notre Dame

I was in Paris for a reason: to read a paper, research, talk... (my Szymanowska Conference Report is on the Chopin with Cherries Blog). At end of the 3rd International Symposium "Maria Szymanowska and Her TIes" was the closing salon, "An Invitation to the Dance," I read poetry by 19th century Polish poets, and verse of my own. I loved being accompanied by improvisations of extraordinary pianist, Edoardo Torbianelli, who has music spilling from under his fingers. I was going to say: from his sleeves, but he rolls them up tightly, so that nothing can spill....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AlQMa9NlEo. Poetry Reading at the Salon "Invitation to the Dance" at the close of the Maria Szymanowska Conference in Paris, November 27, 2015. Edoardo Torbianelli improvises on Johann Alois Graff pianoforte from 1825 and I read my poem "A Study with Cherries" in Polish, from the Chopin with Cherries Anthology (2010).  Recorded by Alicja Bialek-Guillemette.

Here are the words, in English and Polish:

"A Study with Cherries"

          After Etude in C Major, Op. 10, No. 1 and the cherry orchard

                of my grandparents, Stanisław and Maria Wajszczuk

I want a cherry,

a rich, sweet cherry

to sprinkle its dark notes

on my skin, like rainy preludes

drizzling through the air.

Followed by the echoes

of the piano, I climb

a cherry tree to find rest

between fragile branches

and relish the red perfection –

morning cherry music.

Satiated, sleepy,

I hide in the dusty attic.

I crack open the shell

of a walnut to peel

the bitter skin off,

revealing white flesh –

a study in C Major.

Tasted in reverie,

the harmonies seep

through light-filled cracks

between weathered beams

in Grandma’s daily ritual

of Chopin at noon.

_________________________________________

in Polish translation by Maja Trochimczyk

"Etiuda z Czereśniami"

 Inspiracja Etiuda C-Dur, Op. 10, No. 1 i wisniowym sadem mojego dziadka i babci, Stanisława i Marianny Wajszczuk

A ja chcę czereśnie

Słodziutkie czereśnie

Chce poczuć ciemne nuty soku

Na mojej skórze

Jak krople deszczowego preludium

W mżawce poranka

W obłoku fortepianu

Wspinam się na czereśnię

Szukam ukojenia wśród kruchych gałęzi

Cieszę się doskonałością czerwieni

Czereśniową muzyką od samego rana

Nasycona, śpiąca

Chowam się w ciemnościach strychu

By łupać orzechy, obierać gorzką skórkę

Odsłaniać biały miąższ

Studium w tonacji C-dur

Smakuję marzenia

Akordy płyną przez szpary

Starych belek wypełnione światłem

To codzienny rytuał mojej Babuni

Popołudnie z Chopinem

(c) 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk

English version published in Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse (Moonrise Press, 2010)

Photo by Alicia Bialek-Guillemette

I also read 19th century poems  written to Maria Szymanowska by Count Henryk Rzewuski (A Menu of her Dinner) and Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz (Praise of Szymanowska's Talent).  I read them in Polish with a summary in English. The first one was quite funny, a full humorous menu, the second properly laudatory.  Here they are: https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_id=g7NnuFrBtDQ

And, of course, at the end, I read my poem inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's "The Lady with an Ermine" and the theme poem for the salon, "An Invitation to the Dance" -  a lovely trifle, written in the form of a dialogue, on the  intertwined themes of love and dancing...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI-LHJYgwbk




Below are the texts of the two poems recited at the Salon, the closing event of the 3e Maria Szymanowska Colloque, in Paris at the Academie Polonaise de Sciences, on November 27, 2015. I am accompanied on Johann Alois Graff pianoforte by Edoardo Torbianelli,who improvised renaissance style music for the Leonardo poem, and some sweet arpeggios for the Dance poem. Recorded by Alicja Bialek-Guillemette on November 27, 2015.

The Lady With An Ermine

~ after Leonardo da Vinci's portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, in the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow

Her eyes follow me around the room
with that secretive smile she shares
with her famous cousin.

Filled with the knowledge of what was, what will be
she slowly caresses the smooth warm ermine fur.

"Tesoro, amore mio, sii tranquillo, ti amo"

Leonardo’s brush made a space for her to inhabit,
a grey-blue sky painted black much later –
she was pregnant, her son – a Sforza bastard,
the white ermine - the emblem of her Duke.

Sheltered by Polish royalty, she revealed
her charms only to their closest confidantes.
In 1830, exiled in a precious wood box, to Paris,
In 1919, returned to taste the Polish freedom.

"Amore mio, sii tranquillo, ti amo"

In 1939, hidden again, found by the Nazis
for Hitler’s last dream, the Linz Führermuseum,
Art among red flags and swastikas, flourishing
in the dark cavern of his mind. Never built.

Berlin, occupied Krakow, Governor Frank's
hunting lodge, Bavaria. The Red Army's closing in.
Train tracks. Crisp winter air. American soldiers,
The cameras of Monument Men.

"Sii tranquillo, ti amo"

Back home in Krakow, she is safe
in the recess of a museum wall. Under a muted spotlight,
Children play a game:Walk briskly from right to left,
don’t let your eyes leave her eyes, see how she is watching you.

Her eyes follow me around the room
Filled with the knowledge of what was, what will be
she slowly caresses the smooth warm ermine fur.
She knows that I know that she knows.

"Amore mio, ti amo"

_________________

* Tesoro, amore mio, sii tranquillo, ti amo" - fragment of a love letter in Italian, "Sweetheart, my love, be  quiet, I love you"

(c) 2015 by Maja Trochimczyk

Leonardo da Vinci, The Lady with an Ermine

An Invitation To The Dance

And the angels are dancing.

Did you say dancing? Yes, dancing. Making somersaults
and jumping two hundred yards in the air.

Air? Are they here? I thought they lived in infinity,
Or eternity, or the great beyond, or whatchamacalit.
No. Here. They are laughing their heads off.  Giggling,
smiling, smirking, guffawing. Laughing.

What’s so funny? Nic. Nada. Naught.
It is just that they are so happy.
So incredibly,  exorbitantly, blissfully happy.

Why?  Oh, because of that quirky thing
from the country song.

What thing? Don’t you know? Have you not heard
that love conquers all?  That love triumphs
over lies, fear, anger, shame and despair?
That it is? Love is. True love. Our love…

It blossoms in us, through us.
It opens its petals.  The world is more tranquil,
serene in the luminescence of our love.

New stars are born and cherries are sweeter when we
are together, immersed in this love. When we
find it. Return to it. Share it. Cherish it. When we
are not giving up. No matter what. No matter how hard.
No matter how late.  It is soo simple, very simple.

Impossible? Yet, it is here to stay.

So what about these angels, then…
Oh, yes. Would you like to go dancing with the angels?
 Boogie-woogie, waltz, tango or salsa?

(c) 2015 by Maja Trochimczyk

With Szopka krakowska in the Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris

After coming back home, it was time for Christmas and New Year Wishes. I picked a rose, beautiful striped antique one, Rosa Mundi, the Rose of the World that grows in my beloved Descanso Gardens in La Canada. With a green background it was exactly what I needed. Forget medieval cathedrals... here's something real, something that grows:

With the snow and all white

Without the snow and all green

With lights and garlands and spice

May your holidays shine from within!

Happy New Year 2016!

But the stanza I wrote sounded trite and tired to my ears, so unaccustomed to rhyming. Where did this silly rhyme come from?

On a sunny afternoon, I went shopping to my favorite thrift store and found a bunch of music boxes, playing English carols, more or less out of tune. I picked the best ones to add to my ever - growing collection.  Silent night, A little drummer boy, Saint Nick... I thought of the previous owners, who died and left their treasures unattended, waiting to be rescued from the pile of old teddy bears, and damaged Santas. Was it a warm-hearted, cookie-baking Grandma? Was it a lonely, sentimental spinster? Are there still spinsters (what an ugly word!) in 2015?

Time for another Christmas poem, then, this one with music boxes and memories of happy childhood, from one generation to the next...

A Santa music box - snow globe  with toy bird whistles from Poland.

.

A Music Box Christmas

I wind the spring on the music box
Silvery specks swirl in the snow globe

The twinkling of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”
Fills the air. Santa on the rooftop falls into the chimney.
Are you ready for the holidays?  With Scottish whisky cake
Polish makowiec, or American apple pie? Will you cook
Tamales on Christmas Eve, your family gathered
Around steaming pots, laughter mixed with hearty flavors?
Will you roast turkey with fixings on Christmas? Will you
Nibble slices of chocolate oranges, after unwrapping gifts?
Taste walnuts and sesame snaps from your stockings?

I wind the spring on the music box
Silvery specks swirl in the snow globe
Memories of home swirl before me

Sparkling lights shine in the colored tinfoil of Szopka Krakowska,
Its fantastic church towers rise in their Gothic splendor
Above a Nativity Scene and figurines from Polish folk tales.
I make cranberry sauce with diced pears and apples
The way my Mom taught me. Do I still know how
To chop figs and dates into finely-ground poppy seeds
Boiled in milk, re-fried with honey? The favorite flavors
Float away with Ogiński’s polonaise, Farewell to the Homeland.
Under the blazing California Sun, I taste the exotic desserts
Of Poland’s eastern borderlands, where cultures mixed
And worlds mingled – Poles, Lithuanians, Tartars, Jews –
Cornflower blue skies and shimmering gold of rye fields.

I wind the spring on the music box
Silvery specks swirl in the snow globe
I make a promise to myself

This Christmas, I’ll read a novel, wrapped in a plush blanket
And a Santa hat. I will walk alone in the park, come back
To the empty house and watch The Lord of the Rings,
The epic battles of the elements, good versus evil,
Good versus evil  - twirling and waltzing like the silvery
specks in my Santa snow globe. I will sing along “We Wish
You a Merry Christmas” and remember a Nativity Play
With my daughter - an angel waving a green pine bough
Singing in a sweet chorus of children’s voices:
“We swish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!”

© 2015 by Maja Trochimczyk

Szopka Krakowska with toy bird-whistles from Krakow, Poland, 

on my mantelpiece in California.

Exhibit on Immigrants at Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga

An exhibition about notable immigrants to our corner of California is currently on display at Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga (10110 Commerce Avenue, Tujunga, CA 91042). The Bolton Hall Museum celebrates its Centennial in 2013, and the exhibition is one of the many that have been held there. Fellow poet and exhibition organizer, Marlene Hitt, invited me to send in a photo and a quote and thus, I found my way to a Museum display!  It has been a wonderful adventure, coming to and settling in Sunland.  I love this place, luxuriating in the sun!

For my reflection, I presented the following mini-essay, ending with a quote from "The Music Box" (published in Rose Always: A Court Love Story, 2nd rev. ed., Moonrise Press, 2011).

Why California?
The sunlight in California is so different from northern areas of Canada, or Poland. There it is pale, often grayish, frail. Here it brings a rainbow of colors to everything it touches. Everything is more vivid, more intense, under the bright rays, in summer or winter... 

I came to Los Angeles in 1996, with three advanced degrees and three children, for a job at USC that has since ended, with a husband who has since returned to Canada. Two of my children, Marcin and Anna, moved away, but I’m still here with the youngest, Ian. I made Sunland my home, with a garden of roses and pomegranates overlooking the magical grass-covered mountains. I became the Sixth Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga. 

A citizen since 2009, I rode in three 4^th of July parades, published four books of poetry, organized countless events… A music historian, poet, and nonprofit director, I love writing and taking pictures of flowers, leaves and the sky. 

Like my roses, I’ve flourished in sunlight – I started a small press that issued five books, I published about 200 poems in various journals. I have also created and  maintained blogs for various organizations, such as Village Poets, Moonrise Press, the Modjeska Art and Culture Club (of which I’m president), and the Polish American Historical Association. 

As Sr. Director of Planning at Phoenix House, I love helping people in trouble, because I’ve been there, too, overcoming PTSD and depression. Not having an extended family here means that I have time to write a lot, to share with and inspire my readers.
What else? . . . "My music box plays on. I make up the words/just as I made up this love of clay and gold,/the dust of the earth and starlight –/partly fragile and partly eternal."

_________________________

The Music Box

What the world needs now
 is love, sweet love…

My china music box plays a song
from your childhood.
Under the lid with one pink rose
I keep my sentimental treasures –
the miniature portrait
in a grey enamel frame echoing
the color of your tank top
worn in defiance 
of my sophistication.

The white tulle ribbon – a memento 
from my wedding gown?
It held the ornament up 
on the bough of the Christmas tree 
after that second, numinous summer.

My broken ring, bent not to be worn again,
 with a deep scar from your blunt saw, 
a shape marked by the strength of your fingers. 

It was a moment of liberation –
I don’t have to – anything – any more.

The three little diamonds – 
faith, hope and love – embedded 
in the scratched gold, still shine,
though not as brightly as the forty three 
specks of light surrounding your face.

The missing ring piece hit the ceiling
when it broke off with the pent-up energy 
of unwanted love – the marriage that wasn’t.  
It is still somewhere in the corner
of the coldest room in my house.

What else? 
Three brown leaves from the ash tree 
that grew by itself and died, 
unwelcome.  The Cross of Malta 
waiting to shine on your chest.

*  *  * 

What the world needs now
is light, God’s light. . . 

My music box plays on. I make up the words
just as I made up this love of clay and gold, 
the dust of the earth and starlight –
partly fragile and partly eternal.

www.moonrisepress.com/rosealways.html

Cherished Chopin & Poets Cafe

My October 2010 interview for Poets Cafe (KPFK 90.7FM) found its permanent home on the website of Timothy Green, editor of Rattle who graciously supports KPFK's initiative to document poetry life in Los Angeles.

Lois P. Jones, an amazing, spiritual, insightful, and incredibly talented poet (I forgot sensuous and erudite), is a fantastic hostess at the Poets' Cafe, airing on Wednesday evenings at 8:30 p.m. She prepares well for her interviews, reading poetry, talking to her prospective guests, asking them to bring a lot of poems. She is warm and lovely and then... ambushes her guests with completely unexpected questions. Thrown off their planned path, guests have to reveal more about themselves than they knew they would, or would have planned to. The hosts laughs with them, shares her favorite lines of their poems, and leads them into a deeper self-understanding and, might I say, enlightenment. Well done, Lois!

After my hour in the studio, that was to be about the "Chopin with Cherries" anthology, but turned out to be all about the poetic me: Who am I? Why am I here, in Los Angeles? Writing in English? What and who do I love? How do I capture the ineffable in words?

Interview: Maja Trochimczyk on Poets Cafe, hosted by Lois P. Jones and broadcast on Pacifica Radio, KPFK, on March 30, 2011.

Our lovely friend, Kathabela Wilson organized a listening party for the broadcast date of the interview, on March 30, 2011, which she did not know for I did not tell her, nor shared it with Lois, was the 25th anniversary of my baptism during the Easter Vigil at St. Martin's Church in Warsaw, Poland. That miraculous night opened the way across the ocean for me, a Californian by choice. Ultimately, it led to a level of illumination that only now I'm slowly beginning to grasp.

I read one poem from the "Chopin with Cherries" anthology - the title poem, a memory from my Polish childhood, spent in the villages where my grandparents lived. That one is dedicated to my maternal grandparents, Stanislaw and Maria Wajszczuk who settled in his ancestral village of Trzebieszow in the Lublin region after escaping from the area taken over by the Soviets during World War II. My mother was born in Baranowicze, now in Belarus. Each house in the village was surrounded by gardens, neatly divided by fences into sections where children were allowed into (orchard) and those they were not (flower and vegetable gardens). Children were like pets, or like livestock, in their capacity for destruction. My grandmother took no chances with her crop of tomatoes and strawberries...

We were not allowed to climb the cherry trees, either - the branches were too fragile, cracked easily. But the ancient Italian Walnut tree, with a smooth broad trunk and a perfect spot to sit in, with a book and a cup of cherries, that was something else.

The walnuts, first covered in smooth green skin, and completely white (if you peeled off the yellowish skin off each bitter-sweet nut), were scattered to dry in the attic. Full of old clothes, spinning wheels, weird instruments, and bunches of herbs hanging from the rafters, the attic was my refuge on rainy days. I'd read the old weeklies or books, and eat the walnuts or cherries, or whatever other edibles could be found, scattered on old newsprint. Who said, children had to watch TV or play video games to have fun? All you need is the rain, and a little bit of Chopin.

A Study with Cherries

After Etude in C Major, Op. 10, No. 1 and the cherry orchard
of my grandparents, Stanisław and Maria Wajszczuk


I want a cherry,
a rich, sweet cherry
to sprinkle its dark notes
on my skin, like rainy preludes
drizzling through the air.

Followed by the echoes
of the piano, I climb
a cherry tree to find rest
between fragile branches
and relish the red perfection –
morning cherry music.

Satiated, sleepy,
I hide in the dusty attic.
I crack open the shell
of a walnut to peel
the bitter skin off,
revealing white flesh –
a study in C Major.

Tasted in reverie,
the harmonies seep
through light-filled cracks
between weathered beams
in Grandma’s daily ritual
of Chopin at noon.

_____________________________________

I was ready to read two other poems from the Chopin anthology, but Lois moved on, first to my "Ode of the Lost" - about the pain of emigration, dedicated to Adam Mickiewicz of the Great Emigration generation of Poles who settled in France after the fall of the November Uprising of 1830. An Ode of the Lost was published in The Cosmopolitan Review, in a special issue about immigrant experience in poetry that I edited, based on materials from a session at the Polish American Historical Association meeting held in San Diego in January 2010. Since that version (The Cosmopolitan Review) did not include any line breaks, I think it will be nice to see the poem with its stanza divisions.

An Ode of the Lost

~ to Adam Mickiewicz and all Polish exiles

Tired exiles in rainy Paris listen to Mickiewicz
reciting praises of woodsy hills, green meadows —
distant Lithuania, their home painted in Polish verse,
each word thickly spread with meaning,
like a slice of rye bread with buckwheat honey.

“Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! ty jesteś jak zdrowie.
Ile cię trzeba cenić, ten tylko się dowie,
Kto cię stracił” — he says, and we, homeless Poles
without ground under our feet, concur,
sharing the blame for our departure.
There’s no return.

Are not all journeys one way? Forward,
forward, go on, “call that going, call that on.”
The speed of light, merciless angel with a flaming sword,
moves the arrow forward. Seconds, minutes
stretch into years. Onwards. Go.
The time-space cone limits the realm of possibility.
If you stay, you can go on. If you leave—

Can you find blessing in the blur of a moment?
In a glimpse of soft, grassy slopes shining
like burnished gold before the sun turns purple?
Can you learn to love the sweet-fluted songs
of the mockingbird, forget the nightingale?

How far is too far for the lost country
to become but a dream of ancient kings—
where children never cry, wildflowers bloom,
and autumn flutter of brown, drying leaves
whispers of the comforts of winter?
Sleep, sleep, eternal sleep,
in the spring you will awaken…

Note: Quotation from Adam Mickiewicz’s Invocation to Pan Tadeusz, or the Last Foray in Lithuania (“My country! You are as good health: /How much one should prize you, he only can tell who has /lost you”), from Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable, and from the author.

__________________________________

Quickly moving through time in an interview that became my best portrait, I then came to my California inspirations. I read one poem from that strange novella in verse, "Rose Always - A Court Love Story" that preoccupied me from 2005 to 2008 (and still echoes in various love poems I write from time to time, they are all related!). Published just with a number (76), but often entitled just "The Music Box," this poem is the most miraculous, I feel, of the whole interview.

The magic comes from an actual music box, the one you see in my portrait above. I bought it for five dollars at a garage sale from a neighbor on my street. A white porcelain box with a pink rose in a gold frame on the lid, it plays a lovely song. I found it and then the poem just wrote itself, as I put this and that into the box. I do have a weakness for music boxes: my collection is not large, maybe ten or twenty boxes, mostly carved from wood with decorative inlays and carvings. The white china box, delicate and elegant, was a perfect expression of the nostalgic tone of the poem.

The Music Box

What the world needs now
is love, sweet love…

My china music box plays a song
from your childhood.
Under the lid with one pink rose
I keep my sentimental treasures –
the miniature portrait
in a grey enamel frame echoing
the color of your tank top
worn in defiance
of my sophistication.

The white tulle ribbon – a memento
from my wedding gown?
It held the ornament up
on the bough of the Christmas tree
after that second, numinous summer.

My broken ring, bent not to be worn again,
with a deep scar from your blunt saw,
a shape marked by the strength of your fingers.

It was a moment of liberation –
I don’t have to – anything – any more.

The three little diamonds –
faith, hope and love – embedded
in the scratched gold, still shine,
though not as brightly as the forty three
specks of light surrounding your face.

The missing ring piece hit the ceiling
when it broke off with the pent-up energy
of unwanted love – the marriage that wasn’t.
It is still somewhere in the corner
of the coldest room in my house.

What else?
Three brown leaves from the ash tree
that grew by itself and died,
unwelcome. The Cross of Malta
waiting to shine on your chest.

* * *

What the world needs now
is light, God’s light. . .

My music box plays on. I make up the words
just as I made up this love of clay and gold,
the dust of the earth and starlight –
partly fragile and partly eternal.

______________________________________


If one were to look for a poem, amidst all I wrote, that better defines me, not as a music scholar, nor an administrator, nor a award-winning historian, nor an usher who's always late for Mass, nor a mother who only cooks for holidays, nor even a poet, but simply as a person, this is that poem. T.S. Eliot ended "Little Gidding" - the fourth of the Four Quartets, with these prophetic words:

"And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."

_______________________________________

PHOTOS: Maja with Lois in KPFK Studio, October 2010. Maja with Lois at Kathabela and Rick Wilson's Salon, summer 2009; Collage art by Barbara Koziel Gawronski in a California landscape (Tujunga Wash in Sunland) photo by Maja Trochimczyk, and portrait of Maja Trochimczyk by Jolanta Maranska-Rybczynska.

The Secret of Poetry ... and Chopin

Is it hard to be a poet? Apparently, no. Someone said that there are more poets on this planet than ants. I would not go that far, I think that humans are still outnumbered by insects. Nonetheless, I’m constantly surprised and delighted by encounters with poets in so many different walks of life. Before moving here from Montreal, Canada (and earlier, from Poland) I thought that Los Angeles was a place where every second person is an actor or screenwriter waiting for a lucky break. I know now that it is a place of poets and artists. I’m blessed with many new artistic friendships. There are numerous poetry readings across town, there are so many different groups and groupies.

Here in Sunland-Tujunga, a small town in the foothills, we have a museum, art center, historical society, and so much more. Three groups of poets invite members: Chupa Rosa Writers, McGroarty Chapter of the California Association of Chaparral Poets, and Village Poets. There has been a monthly poetry reading series first called The Eccentric Moon, then Camelback Poetry Readings, and now Village Poets Readings. We’ve had festivals and publications, and, since 1999, the institution of the Poet Laureate has highlighted the profile of poetry. What does such a Poet Laureate do? Wonder around in a toga and a laurel wreath?

Maybe once… first and foremost a Poet Laureate is expected to read poetry, write poetry, promote poetry, teach poetry, publish poetry, and breathe poetry… Until 2006, I have never read my poetry in public, nor gone to public readings. I always had poems at home on my shelf, in my native language, Polish, in bi-lingual editions, Italian, French, and in English. I started writing after emigrating to Canada, when I felt completely out of place in my new country and decided to make a home for myself in a new language. I did two contradictory things at the same time: I changed my name back to my impossibly sounding/looking Polish original, and I started writing poetry in English. Thus, I have established a hybrid identity that is from neither the Old World nor from the New one. This fate of not really belonging anywhere is the fate of a “displaced person” who left one country and cannot grow roots in another. Poetry became, for me, a way of “rooting myself” into the new culture, exploring a new world of imagination, and recording & communicating the most intimate thoughts and emotions.

Since I like going to concerts and exhibits, I often write about music or art. This spring, I published a book of poetry about the sublimely beautiful romantic piano music by Fryderyk Chopin, whose 200th birth anniversary is celebrated this year. Called Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse, the volume includes 123 poems by 92 poets, who live in different countries around the world, but all love Chopin’s music (www.moonorisepress.com/chopin.html).

The title comes from one of my poems, based on a childhood memory of eating cherries while sitting in a tree, and listening to a Chopin concert on the radio. Here it is:

A Study with Cherries

After Etude in C Major, Op. 10, No. 1 and the cherry orchard
of my grandparents, Stanisław and Maria Wajszczuk


I want a cherry,
a rich, sweet cherry
to sprinkle its dark notes
on my skin, like rainy preludes
drizzling through the air.

Followed by the echoes
of the piano, I climb
a cherry tree to find rest
between fragile branches
and relish the red perfection –
morning cherry music.

Satiated, sleepy,
I hide in the dusty attic.
I crack open the shell
of a walnut to peel
the bitter skin off,
revealing white flesh –
a study in C Major.

Tasted in reverie,
the harmonies seep
through light-filled cracks
between weathered beams
in Grandma’s daily ritual
of Chopin at noon.



To honor my other set of grandparents, at the border of Belarus, I wrote about my summer memories of harvest, that even little children had to participate in. Thanks to Polish national radio broadcasts, Chopin’s music was present everywhere and people were all the better for it. Their attachment to this music had a root in national history and in a characteristic trait of defiance, connected to a sense of honor and nobility. During WWII, the Nazis banned Chopin and playing his music in public or listening at home was punishable by being sent to a concentration camp. People grew more attached to it, as a result. On October 17, we remember Chopin’s death of TB at the age of 39. He is long gone, but his music remains to enrich our lives. He worked hard making sure every note was just right. This is how we write poetry, too: making sure that every word is just right.

Harvesting Chopin

After Mazurka in F-sharp Minor, Op. 59, No. 3, for my Grandma
Nina, Uncle Galakcyon, and Father, Aleksy Trochimczyk

The straw was too prickly,
the sunlight too bright,
my small hands too sweaty
to hold the wooden rake
my uncle carved for me.
I cried on the field of stubble;
stems fell under his scythe.

I was four and had to work –
Grandma said – no work no food.
How cruel! I longed for
the noon’s short shadows
when I’d quench my thirst
with cold water, taste
the freshly-baked rye bread

sweetened by the strands
of music wafting from
the kitchen window.
Distant scent of mazurkas
floated above the harvesters
dressed in white, long-sleeved shirts
to honor the bread in the making

The dance of homecoming
and sorrow – that’s what
Chopin was in the gjavascript:void(0)olden air
above the fields of Bielewicze
where children had to earn their right
to rest in the daily dose of the piano –
too pretty, too prickly, too bright



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Published in "Voice of the Village" October 2010 issue. The 19th-century vintage postcard from Maja Trochimczyk's Private Collection.
Yucca blooms in Big Tujunga Wash, San Gabriel Mountains, photo by Maja Trochimczyk. Portrait by Kathabela Wilson, Beyond Baroque, September 12, 2010.