Poetry in Translation from English to Polish

At the Foothills  Poetry Festival on January 10, 2015, I read several poems translated into Polish. Even though Polish is my native tongue, I never write in Polish. Actually, I penned just one Polish verse, about a caterpillar sitting on the window-sill and being sad because it was raining and the caterpillar could not go to the movies. Yes, it was a children's verse. That's it. Somehow, poetry comes to me only in English - I started writing to be able to master English and express every nuance of meaning and emotion. I do have great forerunners in doing that - Joseph Conrad, or rather Jozef Konrad Korzeniowski, who became one of the great stylists of the English language.

In poetry - I was fascinated by bilingual edition of Apollinaire, a French poet of Polish descent. My mom had this book with strange experimental poems, letters scattered across the page, streaming down like droplets of rain. Amazing!  Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) was a French poet and playwright of Polish descent, born Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki. He wrote one of the earliest surrealist plays, The Breasts of Tiresias, was founded in WWI and died in the Spanish flu pandemic.

I'm not dead yet, so there's hope I'll become a better Polish-language poet in time. It is a challenge to render one language in another in prose. Poetry is much harder because the melody and rhythm of the language has to be taken into account, not just the meaning.  My first poems that were published in Polish, in an anthology by the Krak Art Group, were translated by others, Konrad Wilk and Liliana Wilk. I translated my own poems for some other publications, such as Poezja Dzisiaj, in Poland - for a set of emigre poetry edited by Anna Maria Mickiewicz of London.  It is really as hard as pulling teeth for me. What I decided to do was to adapt and paraphrase, keeping the overall meaning and making sure that the Polish-language poem actually sounds like a poem and not a complete mess.

Here are some results.

MEMENTO VITAE      


Pomówmy o śmierci.
Twój ostatni oddech
To koniec – a może nie?
Nie wiesz nic.

Mówmy o ostatnim
Dniu. Co byś zrobił
Gdybyś wiedział?
Kogo byś kochał?
Czy szukałbyś swej najmilszej,
Najgłębszej miłości?
A może byś został wśród bliskich
Których dobrze znasz?
Czy okradłbyśkogoś,
Obrabował, obraził?
Czy zacząłbyś rozpaczać?
Wrzucił listy w ogień?
Gdyby kanwa twej przyszłości
Znikła? I zostałby ci tylko
Dzień? Lub godzina?

Mówmy więc o życiu.
Każdy oddech niesie cię
W taniec minut, sekund.
W rytm serca.

Właśnie tak.  


© 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk  

MEMENTO VITAE                  


Let's talk about dying.
The gasp of last breath.
The end. Or maybe not,
We don't know.
Let's talk about the last day.
What would you do
if you knew?
Whom would you love?
Would you find your dearest,
most mysterious love?
Or would you just stay
in the circle of your own?
Would you rob, steal
or insult anyone?
Would you cry?
Burn your papers?
If the fabric of your future
shrank to one day,
or maybe just an hour?

Let's talk about living, then.
The next breath,
that will take you
to the next minute,
the next heartbeat.

Just about – now.

© 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk
 

O  SZCZĘŚCIU

W domu z witrażami czereśni
usłyszysz jak kot śpi, chrapiąc w komforcie
ręcznie haftowanej poduszki

W domu świeżo ściętych róż
poczujesz jak powietrze zakwita
słodyczą cynamonu i muszkatu

Poczujesz smak miłości
zmieszanej z kroplami deszczu
na patio w mym magicznym domu

Gdzie wszystko, czego dotkniesz,
zmienia się w czyste złoto
szczęścia, które tak dobrze pamiętasz

ON BLISS

In a house of stained-glass cherries
you can hear a cat sleep
snoring into the comfort
of his hand-embroidered pillow.

In a house of fresh-cut roses
you can feel the air bloom
with the sweetness
of cinnamon and nutmeg.

You can taste love
mixed with raindrops
on the patio of my magic house
where everything you touch
changes into pure gold
of bliss, perfectly remembered.


(C) 2006 by Maja Trochimczyk
 

DEFINICJA LITERATURY

Nie chodzi o rozdzielanie zapałki na czworo
Czy liczenie diabłów na okrągłej główce
To wszystko nieważne

Patrz: wschód słońca nad Szczytem Truskawek
I Górą Rozczarowań tańczy na puchatym
Tłuszczyku pierwszych obłoków lata

Zobacz: świetliste linie na płytkim strumieniu
W kanionie błyszczą jak łuski karpia
Czekającego na śmierć w wannie przed Wigilią

Słuchaj: stada wron rozsiadają się na noc
Kanciaste kształty pokrywają czernią gałęzie drzew
Jak klastery, ostre akordy Xenakisa

Widzisz? Wrony kąpią się w rzece, rozciągają
Skrzydła na betonowym nabrzeżu, woda kapie
Dużymi kroplami – one nieświadome, drzemią

Jak wytatuowane, spocone tłumy wakacjuszy
Na zapiaszczonych ręcznikach w Santa Monica ,
Czekające na tsunami, którego nie będzie

Właśnie to jest ważne: spójrz inaczej – nie na siebie
Lecz we wszechświat, nie – na przegrane ambicje
Lecz na miliony gwiazd w galaktykach

Kosmiczne kolizje, wybuchy supernowych
Tysiące niezamieszkałych planet –
Możemy je policzyć, nie możemy dotknąć

Możemy dotknąć, ale nie policzyć
Cieniutkie linie na płatku róży, wyschniętym
w upale pustyni, choć zakwitł dziś rano

Nie o nas tu chodzi – rozejrzyj się dalej
uchwyć co przeminęło, zatrzymaj ziarno czasu
w swej otwartej dłoni – tę iskierkę, chwilę
 

DEFINITION: WRITING

in response to George Jisho Robertson’s essay “Path of Poesis”

It is not like splitting the match in four
or counting devils on its round head –
none of this matters, really

see the sunrise above Strawberry Peak
and Mount Disappointment shimmer
on the puffy underbelly of summer clouds

be dazed by bright ripples on a shallow canyon stream
shining like scales of a carp waiting to be killed
in a bathtub before Polish Easter

listen to the roosting birds at dusk,
the murder of crows covering tree branches
with angular shapes, dense Xenakis chords,

black clusters, dissonant, intense. They bathe
in the river, sit on a concrete bank with wet wings
outstretched, drooping with water, docile

like tattooed crowds resting, sweating
on sandy beach towels in Santa Monica,
waiting for a tsunami that will not come

shifting the gaze is important, from the navel
to cosmos – not how we fail in a multitude of ways,
but what graces hide in galaxies

that collide amidst exploding supernovas,
on thousands of inhabitable planets
we’ll count but never touch –

we’ll touch but never count
the veins on the petals of the rose
shriveling from desert heat, just opened

Not us, then, look around, beyond,
catch what's already gone, hold it
in your hand - the spark, the passing

Maja Trochimczyk © 2012
 

ETIUDA Z CZERESNIAMI



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
 

A STUDY WITH CHERRIES

After Etude in C Major, Op. 10, No. 1 and a cherry orchard of
my grandparents, Maria Anna and Stanislaw 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.

(c) 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk

Midsummer Lessons from Mars and Lascaux

 It is never too late to learn something new. Two bits of scientific knowledge have recently captured my attention. First, a new method of dating ancient artifacts with radioactive isotopes resulted in rewriting the chronology of Paleolithic art: apparently, the astounding frescoes of bisons and horses in the caves of Lascaux, France, were not painted 20,000 years ago by our direct ancestors, homo sapiens, but, instead, were created over 43,000 years ago when Europe was inhabited by the Neanderthals. Therefore, we have to change our preconceived notion of the hairy Neanderthals as ape-like primitive brutes. What a discovery!

Second, the inventive laboratory-on-wheels Curiosity landed on Mars without a glitch and began sending back to Earth photographs of its rocky surroundings. I had seen a life-size model of the probe during the annual open house at JPL: with legs taller than me and two wheels on each leg, this futuristic vehicle was able to drive in any direction, over piles of rocks under one leg and smooth sand under another. On a Sunday night in August I was a guest at JPL’s California control station watching the Curiosity landing – or, rather, watching rows of engineers in blue shirts doing something important and intently staring at their screens. We enjoyed lectured lectures by JPL staff between computer animations of Martian landscapes traversed by the spacecraft, while waiting for the numbers on a small screen on the side to confirm that all engines fired, the silicone parachute deployed, all temperature sensors reported normal data, etc. Not only was it a “blind” landing on instruments alone: the landing was actually operated by the machines pre-programmed to follow a certain course of action.

The radio signal, traveling at the speed of light, takes nearly 15 minutes to come to Earth from Mars. Our screens reported each stage of the action 15 minutes after it already happened! What a feat of human ingenuity! But this 15-minute delay also tells us how important it is to live in the present, here on Earth (Memento Vitae). We are stuck here, for now. It is really too far to go somewhere else.


________________________________________________

A poem of mine, "Memento Vitae" was published in Serbian translation in the largest daily paper; French, Spanish and Chinese versions are in the works… Thanks to my friend Dr. Mira Mataric, who translated five of my poems for a Serbian literary journal, I now have a publication in the same alphabet (though not language) than my Belorussian grandparents used. The publication in the daily paper was quite a surprise. I hope we all cherish our lives 43,000 years after the Neanderthals first decorated their caves. How? Read my poem "A Lesson for my Daughter!" But first comes a reflection from the beach...

    Walking on Seashells

broken pieces of fish bones
lie scattered by the tide
where sandpipers feed

hermit crabs move into empty shells
whose former inmates
lost their future, devoured

the ocean of death surrounds us

ants troop in and out of the eye
of the beetle that lies
in the middle of my path

crushed sea shells paint the beach
bone-white – prickly sand
slowly changes into rock

fossils capture cruel snapshots
of transient past

unperturbed, we march on,
treading on traces of old tragedies

insects die first, yet outlive us
we do not mind their deaths
 
with a gaze fixed above,
we ignore countless incidents
of random murders, as we walk into
the gaping mouth of the Behemoth

 Memento Vitae 

Let's talk about dying.
The gasp of last breath.
The end. Or maybe not,
We don't know.
Let's talk about the last day.
What would you do
if you knew?
Whom would you love?
Would you find your dearest,
most mysterious love?
Or would you just stay
in the circle of your own?
Would you rob, steal
or insult anyone?
Would you cry?
Burn your papers?
If the fabric of your future
shrank to one day,
or maybe just an hour?

Let's talk about living, then.
The next breath,
that will take you
to the next minute,
the next heartbeat.

Just about – now.

© 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk
  

A Lesson for My Daughter 

After a ruby-colored glass of Merlot
I told my daughter the secret of the Universe.
I solved it at noon, by the river.

Questions do not matter.
The right answer to life is: "Yes."
If you build a circle of "Yes" around you,
Affirming the essence of beauty,
You'll be safe.

If you say "I love you" to everyone
(Very quietly so they can't hear, but you know),
You'll walk in a sphere of gladness
No insult or curse may pierce.

You'll be whole and holy:
Living deeply where love blossoms,
Laughter bubbles, and joy overflows.


© 2006 by Maja Trochimczyk      __________________________________________

NOTE: Photos from San Francisco and Los Angeles, (C) 2012 by Maja Trochimczyk