On Monday, March 28, Tomasz Różycki and Marie Lundquist will read with Adam Zagajewski in the Tenth Muse Series at the 92nd Street Y in New York. Here is a poem from each.
CINNAMON AND CLOVES
by Tomasz Różycki, translated by Mira Rosenthal
I’m lying here with a hole in my head
through which the spring is peeking in at me.
And, Dad, the walls are blooming, wallpaper
and chair and velvet couch all blossoming.
Exotic birds can finally escape. And so
today the mannequins are in control.
They’re decorating kitchen walls with pictures
from children’s books. The mailman is to blame.
From the start, I knew it would end this way,
the first time I got that letter with spices
from the colony. Later they arrived
without a word of warning, day or night,
so fragrant, bright, I had to hide with them
in darkness, all alone, and close my eyes.
from A SIMPLE TALE
by Marie Lundquist, translated by Malena Mörling
In the past I walked through the streets with rain in my hair. In the parks the people stood still, embracing the trees. There is a movement through the chest, like a deer when it is flying through the grass. The hoofs go straight into the soft, atrial chamber. Perhaps there is a simple tale, lit by the soft light of sleep. I hear myself speak, my hunched shoulders, my smallness. Suddenly I am smaller than my name.
Tomasz Różycki lives in the formerly German Polish town of Opole and is the author of seven volumes of poetry, of which The Forgotten Keys has been translated into English by Mira Rosenberg (Zephyr Press, 2007). Her translation of Colonies will be published by Zephyr Press later this year. Mira Rosenthal’s own book of poems, The Local World, will be published by Kent State later this year. She will be a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University this coming year. This translation first appeared in Zoland Poetry.
Read some more of Różycki’s poems at Agni, PEN, and the Academy of American Poets sites.
Marie Lundquist is a poet and playwright living in Stockholm with many books and honors to her name. Malena Mörling is a translator of Tomas Transtromer and Edith Södergran as well as Lundquist and has published two books of poems.
See them all at the Tenth Muse on Monday night at the 92nd Street Y.
Read a portfolio of newly translated work by Adam Zagajewski in Little Star #2.
This March sees a flowering of readings of Polish poetry in New York, found out more here.