V
vampiredust
Guest
I thought I'd share some of my favourite poems from two of my favourite Polish poets, Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska
Czeslaw received the Nobel prize for literature in 1980 (the year I was born) and died in 2004, his Collected Poems sits proudly beside my bed
I first discovered Wislawa's poetry a couple of years ago when I first joined university, one of her poems was included in an anthology we had to read for Creative Writing.
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Lake by Czeslaw Milosz
Maidenly lake, fathomless lake,
Stay as you were once, overgrown with rushes,
Idling with a reflected cloud, for my sake
Whom your shore no longer touches.
Your girl was always real to me.
Her bones lie in a city by the sea.
Everything occurs too normally.
A unique love simply wears away.
Girl, hey, girl, we repose in an abyss.
The base of a skull, a rib, a pelvis,
Is it you? me? We are more than this.
No clock counts hours and years for us.
How could a creature, ephemeral, eternal,
Measure for me necessity and fate?
You are locked with me in a letter-crystal.
No matter that you're not a living maid.
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Bodybuilders' Contest by Wislawa Szymborska
From scalp to sole, all muscles in slow motion.
The ocean of his torso drips with lotion.
The king of all is he who preens and wrestles
with sinews twisted into monstrous pretzels.
Onstage, he grapples with a grizzly bear
the deadlier for not really being there.
Three unseen panthers are in turn laid low,
each with one smoothly choreographed blow.
He grunts while showing his poses and paces.
His back alone has twenty different faces.
The mammoth fist he raises as he wins
is tribute to the force of vitamins.
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Czeslaw received the Nobel prize for literature in 1980 (the year I was born) and died in 2004, his Collected Poems sits proudly beside my bed
I first discovered Wislawa's poetry a couple of years ago when I first joined university, one of her poems was included in an anthology we had to read for Creative Writing.
---------------
Lake by Czeslaw Milosz
Maidenly lake, fathomless lake,
Stay as you were once, overgrown with rushes,
Idling with a reflected cloud, for my sake
Whom your shore no longer touches.
Your girl was always real to me.
Her bones lie in a city by the sea.
Everything occurs too normally.
A unique love simply wears away.
Girl, hey, girl, we repose in an abyss.
The base of a skull, a rib, a pelvis,
Is it you? me? We are more than this.
No clock counts hours and years for us.
How could a creature, ephemeral, eternal,
Measure for me necessity and fate?
You are locked with me in a letter-crystal.
No matter that you're not a living maid.
----------------
Bodybuilders' Contest by Wislawa Szymborska
From scalp to sole, all muscles in slow motion.
The ocean of his torso drips with lotion.
The king of all is he who preens and wrestles
with sinews twisted into monstrous pretzels.
Onstage, he grapples with a grizzly bear
the deadlier for not really being there.
Three unseen panthers are in turn laid low,
each with one smoothly choreographed blow.
He grunts while showing his poses and paces.
His back alone has twenty different faces.
The mammoth fist he raises as he wins
is tribute to the force of vitamins.
------------------
And Wislawa Szymborska got her Nobel in 1996.
