Four Poems by Jacek Gutorow (b. 1970)
Poem
The box on the table has begun to think.
Thinking beyond me.
Or is it just my imagination?
Of course not. It is. Meditating behind my back.
I don’t see it. How do I know it is thinking?
This thought has just occurred to me.
The thought that a wooden cube
has begun to think.
I turn around.
Tap my finger against the plywood.
Look inside.
I can see one hollow thought.
Translated by Piotr Florczyk
Reading Homer
to Stanisław Vicenz
Another stilt, another verse
to prop the rest. The sky is sour, full
of lingering snow. Beyond that hill
we find some washed up afternoon red,
but that’s it. The words tilt in our direction
and the signal arrives, the road is cleared: we set off from a venerable
German village to a city of memories,
passing by the undeveloped pictures of the past.
How come, Odysseus? All you needed to do was reach
Ithaca. No sentimental excursions,
metered sentences, wondrous pictures
scattered like poppy seed from an open hand.
Your task was to return and settle down. And here you are — entering gardens
like swift digressions, seducing girls and birds,
traversing in stately gait the ungainly whole.
Translated by Kacper Barczak
Parched Throat
Can’t speak. The last rainless droplet.
Dust blocks the passage of thoughts,
And they get mired at midpoints; soon they’ll be stuck for good.
Gravel. Pebbles. Each crack filled to the brim.
A veritable congestion. Like there are no words.
You say something and you hear a river flee to its dry spring,
An orchard coming down to light close to the earth and deeper, into grainy dusk
Beneath your fingers. Life got stuck inside and stays there, baked in.
It would rather speak; instead it makes parched circles.
Translated by Kacper Bartczak
Breath
Why I keep silent is a question
it makes no sense to answer the trees
crowd the horizon in rows only the song
remains the song is a confession
band over band of yellow sky
at evening when platforms
depopulate the case is closed just please
no more questions the boat finally
at rest at some age
one no longer waits for wind one waits for a deeper
breath that’s why I keep silent why I am silent now
Translated by Kacper Bartczak
Edited byMarit MacArthur Kacper Bartczak