Showing posts with label Anna Swirszczynska. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anna Swirszczynska. Show all posts

Friday, April 9, 2021

something unimportant






Happy as something unimportant
and free as a thing unimportant.
As something no one prizes
and which does not prize itself.
As something mocked by all
and which mocks at their mockery.
As laughter without serious reason. 
As a yell able to outyell itself.
Happy as no matter what,
as any no matter what.

Happy
as a dog's tail.



~ Anna Swir
from Talking to my body
translated by Czeslaw Milosz



Monday, May 25, 2020

priceless gifts





An empty day without events.
And that is why
it grew immense
as space. And suddenly
happiness of being
entered me.

I heard
in my heartbeat
the birth of time
and each instant of life
one after the other
came rushing in
like priceless gifts.



~ Anna Swirszczynska
from Talking to My Body
 translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan




Wednesday, December 4, 2013

my body effervesces




I am born for the second time.
I am light
as the eyelash of the wind.
I froth, I am froth.

I walk dancing,
if I wish, I will soar.
The condensed lightness
of my body
condenses most forcibly
in the lightness of my foot
and its five toes.
The foot skims the earth
which gives way like compressed air.
An elastic duo
of the earth and of the foot. A dance
of liberation.

I am born for the second time,
happiness of the world
came to me again.
My body effervesces,
I think with my body which effervesces.

If I wish,
I will soar.


~ Anna Swirszczynska
translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan



Anna Swir (Świrszczyńska) was born in Warsaw, Poland, to an artistic though impoverished family. She worked from an early age, supporting herself while she attended university to study medieval Polish literature. In the 1930s she worked for a teachers’ association, served as an editor, and began publishing poetry. Swir joined the Resistance during World War II and worked as a military nurse during the Warsaw Uprising; at one point she came within an hour of being executed before she was spared. Czeslaw Milosz writes of knowing her during this time and has translated a volume of her work. Her experiences during the war strongly influenced her poetry. In 1974 she published "Building the Barricade", a volume which describes the suffering she witnessed and experienced during that time. She also writes frankly about the female body in various stages of life. In addition to poetry, Swir wrote plays and stories for children and directed a children’s theater. She lived in Krakow from 1945 until her death from cancer in 1984.



Wednesday, May 26, 2010

poetry reading


.



I'm curled into a ball
like a dog
that is cold.

Who will tell me 
why I was born,
why this monstrosity
called life.

The telephone rings.  I have to give
a poetry reading.

I enter.
A hundred people, a hundred pairs of eyes.
They look, they wait.

I am supposed to tell them
why they were born,
why there is 
this monstrosity called life.




~  Anna Swirszczynska
translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan