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 Contributors: Poets and Translators: Adam Szyper Amir Or Aniela Gregorek Beata Pozniak Bill Wolak Birutė Jonuškaitė Danuta Bartosz Dariusz Tomasz Lebioda Hassanal Abdullah Hatif Janabi Jerzy Gregorek Jaroslaw Pijarowski Joan Digby Józef Baran Kazimierz Burnat Małgorzata Żurecka Lee Kuei-shien Maria Mistrioti Mirosław Grudzien Nat Scammacca Naznin Seamon Sona Van Stanley H. Barkan Tomasz Marek Sobieraj Zbigniew Milewski Poetry in Bengali Ahmed Shiplu Rafiquzzaman Rony Roni Adhikari Uday Shankar Durjoy Short Reivew Belal Beg Letters to the Editor Badal Ghosh Jasim Uddin Tutul Maria Mistrioti Nilas Mazumder Noorelahi Mina Jelani Sarker Cover Art: Jacek Wysocki Logo: Najib Tareque |
Celebrating 21 Years of Publication প্রকাশনার একুশ বছর Polish Poetry13 Polish Poets 1. Józef Baran FIRST SNOW IS FALLING first snow is falling and raises the quiet music of childhood to heaven I think about first things I will never do again about times clear as a spring that are already behind me I try to remember their juicy taste and smell first snow is falling I stand at the window feeling old MY FATHER IN THE HOSPITAL my shrunken father you have become so slight you approach through a white corridor leaning against the walls I would like to rock you in my arms with a fable that you will continue to live and live and grow back healthy and strong so that one day you will lead me down a path by my hand small again and rustling all around us will be fields of boundless life A WOMAN WAITS FOR HER COLUMBUS the first one swam beside her like a blue cloud ah! her heart grew when he brushed her with his love the second shot past her with the fierceness of hail they spoke in sign language he didn’t leave any trace of himself behind the third tossed her sorrows while leaving he almost broke himself against her underwater reefs and the fourth mistook her in a fog for somebody else he gave her many false names she had to find herself again so many times undressed and still not discovered a woman is waiting for her Columbus and more often she feels like a rocky island sinking in isolation to which nobody but God comes to harbor (so less and less she makes a lighthouse of her body) Tranlsted from Polish by Aniela & Jerzy Gregorek 2. Danuta Bartosz AFTER 50 YEARS OF SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY Loneliness is encroaching between fingers. A walking stick and crutches are the support. They are looking at each other with disbelief. How life is twisted. A woman isn’t crying. She’s got her back hunched by work. The scarf is covering her uncaressed hair. In the yard a homeless bench. A tied pack of helplessness on it is looking for its addressee. In the dumpster of existence there is a birthday today, a rhapsody of fulfillment not completely clearly played. TO GO AHEAD To untie the ropes to pull the anchor to leave the harbour of stagnation To catch the wind in the sails to wander to dream to discover what is still undiscovered To amaze of what we haven’t been amazed by To memorize what hasn’t still happened To check why without you the world isn’t music the branches of the tree are humming the same way. DNIEPER RIVER, WARTA RIVER, EAST RIVER & HUDSON Where do I come from? Where do I aim? In which soil are my roots? I look for myself in three homelands, In the waves of three rivers. One gave me birth (but a child fell down from a footbridge into the turbulent waves of theWar ). The second brought me up, the third taught me how to live. Yesterday, a blade of a branch soaked in blood of conflagration was writing my life. Today, the wind of time blurs the borders and faces of two mothers—the one who gave birth and went to heaven, and that of the holy worker cutting paper on a paper cutter, who brought me up and wrote me into her life. River, river—which of the there of you is really mine? 3. Kazimierz Burnat FATHOMING I am lacking a few moments to own distance in reverie over the embers burnt out I close my eyes and sense the fleeting whisper of tomorrow the moon gives in to soft light of the Morning with warm pulse I am inscribing myself within its freshness to add new meaning to intimacy I nestle into the trunk my own piece of sky * * * Clouds drifted apart squabbling through the window of a deep blue you are looking out for the loved ones a recalled voice of a mother helps you breathe steadily and courageously let the morning hustle in with the scent of mist and flowering crops on the wrinkled canvas of the sky situations fade away recorded on the film of memory you are slowly penetrating shadows wandering among the relics of childhood A HUMAN UNIT Disinterested malevolence of the environment hushes up helplessness does more and more good but guilt bulges his life in a narrow apartment like a well being a promise of an access to a vast Eden in a mossy rampart of generations a fair of fleas a twitter of bats diversity created from homogeneity IGNITE SENSE It is not enough to reverse thinking in another direction towel wrap dreams relieved heat her body moistened in the clash with just sketched stimulus you need to determine nonsense to later luminous tentacles forearms excite the sense of the arms of Morpheus WITHOUT THE WORDS Close hand in hand with not waking day penetrate into the vastness of the pane crystal light deep sigh touch lips hot breath ephemeral moments embarrassment as the dawn however, oxygen to the heart and for the psyche secret song of impulse AMOR FATI III memory than other Every soul anchored in the body triggers the touch of death for bone (even the criminals) estimate remains death certificate Their bones but out-smoked in crematoria along with the souls and are not subject cataloging however, in human memory take on flesh persevering in the glory of the universe no date of death no birthday 4. Aniela Gregorek REFLECTION It’s a bedtime story, my favorite My daughter looks and looks and does not say A word, she listens, her head full Of unruly hair, tilting, her round cheeks blushed I want to sleep in your eyes She suddenly says staring straight into mine like hers, gray-green wide open, unblinking, I can see In them, a clear reflection of myself WOMEN IN A WAITING ROOM 1. A silver needle quivers in her fingers like a white fire as she quilts a bed cover for my grandchild, she smiles. Pulling through and through, she sighs when blood beads flicker against her pale skin. Accepting. She says, Just part of the process. 2. Poked fingers, burnt skin, dirt under the nails, we bake cookies, plant prickly rose bushes, we quilt. We make our life. Made with love, I say, But isn’t it more like laboring most of the time, and not giving up? She nods her head without looking. That’s love. Sometimes waiting, not because you must, but want to. MOVING IN DARKNESS The floors creak deep As I pass from one room to the other With time we get used to things That made us shriek before At night my husband turns over in his sleep The bed springs-song under his weight Near the window a cool draft, moving the curtains, kisses my warm face and bare shoulders I don’t want to stop wind from coming in The frame has gaps as big as my small fingers A deep sigh escapes from my daughter’s chest I lean over and smooth her long, golden hair 5. Jerzy Gregorek WARRIOR You think you are not a warrior, that you live between peaceful walls, not seeing even in the daily light that the walls come closer every year quietly adapting your deceiving mind to the changes you have never desired. You think you don’t have to see born men bent to the wind that you don’t have to hear their children running in circles on uneven cobblestone streets, licking away their fathers’ faded words. You think you have the right to pass through heart’s time closing your eyes when the pen writes your name and another new bridge only leads you farther into the fog. You say if only there were a war you would keep a weapon at home ready to fire, but there is only the sound of wind carrying traces of innocent self-destructive men whose bodies cover the green fields where we become men. SWEAT The sun is just waking up the day. They had fallen asleep in the middle of the night when the light wind cooled their heated walls. Now they lie on the bed of an open-air truck, his eleven-year-old daughter still sleeping in her mother’s arms, his wife staring into the sky just above his head, her body telling him, “It will pass.” Even though by noon their hands are hot, the strawberries they pick cool their broken skin. Sweat drips beneath the clothes running down into their shoes. He sees his daughter adding another box onto the back of the truck, the only math she needs to learn. They lie down on the truck floor while going home. His daughter’s eyes closed while his wife stares into the same place in the sky. He gazes at her until she reaches for him, and he crawls to her across the bed of the moving truck, where she embraces him with one arm and her daughter with the other. As they pass beneath, he looks at the crowns of trees and billboard ads with one grabbing his attention— a picture of a girl sitting on a bicycle, saying, “Your money will not be wasted. You will sweat as much as we promised.” He slowly closes his eyes while the bumps on the road jiggle him to sleep. WHERE ARE WE? Martin Luther King Done. John F. Kennedy Done. Jerzy Popieluszko. Done. His family is already asleep. Drinking flat water from a bottle, he looks into the fireplace flames. He found out today what years ago his friend wanted to publish— his body has never been found. In the middle of the night, still watching flames consuming wood, half asleep, he imagines two executioners dragging a teacher to his final lesson. Truth. Death. Silence. Life. Truth. Death. Silence. Life. The crowd keeps chanting. In the morning, slowly, he lifts his heavy eyelids. It is 7 a.m., and soon he has to go to his office. His family is awake now. Their cheerful sounds come from the kitchen. He straightens his yesterday clothes and walks to greet them. Good morning. Good morning. —Hi, Daddy! My precious. —Daddy, look what I did yesterday. Today is Martin Luther Kind Day. —Who is Martin Luther King? A hero, goofy. A hero? —Do we still need heroes? Of course we do. —Where are we? Everybody laughs as he walks through the hall and gently closes the front door behind himself. 6. Mirosław Grudzień A LESSON it’s so few words that I wring out of myself so much as some chalk dust out of an eraser after the blackboard having been wiped clean something still remains is stuck like a bone in the throat will not go out on the school blackboard an old beak is writing an unintelligible text: my life it’s less and less time until the lesson end ring less and less words less and less chalk held in fingers BROKEN we rose from a table just for a moment the same cup of coffee the same glass of wine are waiting but a broken table top is between us like a bottomless lake a cobweb thread is broken and so is the world one edge is where you are the other is where I am time has been wound out of a hunk there is abyss between us trembling and shaky a hardly visible small boat goes on it there and back endlessly RAINING it was heavily raining as if in fear of the end we were standing half a step in a no-entrance gate giving some minor gifts to each other in a hurry as usual the words were not as should be the truth is nothing but your necklace matching your eyes was essential there I watched little green balls round your neck green planetary globes surrounding a star and myself on one of them so tiny smaller than a speck dreaming of two twin springs of green water 7. Dariusz Tomasz Lebioda A BEGGAR-WOMAN IN THE TEMPLE OF TAO A tiny woman with traces of beauty on her wrinkled face had been here long before my birth –always nearby a Tao shrine, always in the shadow of plane tree and a poplar She had a husband, he died, and children who left her–she met people, they forgot about her Now she stands on the steps leading to golden elephant statue asking for some holy Yuan’s People give her notes and coins, take pictures and for ever leave She stays on with her sadness and a warm smile For her, in a while, old China will go blank soon, on the altar of destiny, the last wisp of incense will burn down THE COINS OF CHINESE BOYS Three boys of the same age curiously fixed their eyes on me– I took a photo of them and gave each a coin from a remote country They smiled and jumped up and down as if it was a real fortune –I will be leaving center of civilization soon, and I might never come back here again– The little boys will stash the coins among their greatest treasure One day, when I’m gone, maybe one of them will become a poet and write a verse about then was gone, just the way all people go Translated into English by Alina Jelińska-Żelazny BLACK SILK I stand by the side of the road not larger than a lady bug or moth not larger than the tear of a crow or the pit of an apricot not larger than a grain of flax or eyelash of a doe –fearfully I lift up my head and listen to the radiance of the black silk of eternity Translated into English by Adam Szyper & Stanley H. Barkan THE ASH AND DIAMOND Someday we will stand frightened as if a bomb went off resembling the blind of Breughel–we’ll look for a haven to anchor our thoughts’pale sails–someday snatched from our dreams, we’ll jump out from a window; before we fall down, we’ll manage to fall asleep and wake up again someday, like a hero of the Fifties, we’ll begin running away, and time, our fake friend, will shoot a burst of diamonds right from behind, and we’ll fall headlong into the ashes. Translated from Polish by the poet 8. Zbigniew Milewski ON A BLUE ROAD Fogs and smokes from St. Catherine mountain are climbing up the Lysica mountain. The face of our patron is fading, the whiter and newer plaster figure is becoming more attractive today than the blackened one from Africa. It embraces the Franciscan new-cross up to the daybreak. In the monastery right behind me, there is a noise of bars being closed, the witches that are being sold on market stands are less fair like the stones run on the way. CHIRPING IN THE PLACE OF CULTURE according to my three-year-old at the exhibition of evolution in the Palace of Culture the skeletons of sweet dinosaurs were hatching from their shelves with their mouth open as for me I liked much more the twirting spanish crickets—according to my wife— sounding like the worst nightmare luckily smoothed by the collection of stuffed animals in their expensive fur coats. LETTER FROM WARSAW Mom, do you know that at the Castle Square in Warsaw right in front of the column of Sigmund the King I heard the Ukrainian song sang by our Nathasha The one from Krzemieniec. Again I got a nosebleed Nobody however made an attempt to stop the flow of red when I was sitting in the wicker chair sipping beer and putting verses together for spirits as I have shadows here for company—those known from readings and papers telling me that I have a talent and the deceased ones are leaving for the world full of memories that burn their insights more than vodka sipped from miniatures I know that some of them are dead. I have read their obituaries by the door of the House of Literature on notice board where the invitations for author’s evening God knows for whom As they say here—for friends and relatives of the rabbit with no cash nor one poem competition. Mom, I think my final hour has come For I was called from my easy chair to the board made of cork, right next to the straw mulch stack with poems written on pieces of paper pinned on it They called him a renowned poet. For me to read or improvise the poem to commemorate our national poet, I therefore killed the straw mulch stack with a text on a pin. The police and television came and Nathalie sang Ave Maria a capella then a straw mulch stack was made and shadows of Alexander’s, Raphael’s, Milosz’s and Adam’s disappeared. Julian said that we won’t turn off the lights and we went to drink our miniature vodka in spite of the whole world—Poland is a Poet. A MINUTE FROM FAIRY TALES a touch from sandbox a torn teddy bear from the tearoom left behind the building is rocking his hips here you are have a crumb cake to put you to sleep gin without tonic fell from the moon when the uncle woke up with the right hook let us go to the sand to other brothers. Get to know them they are in one hole. Translated from Polish by Dorota Zegarowska 9. Jaroslaw Pijarowski “THE TASTE OF DARK ALLEYS” The taste of dark alleys The taste of still footfalls. The inconstant, Psychedelic Taste of the Dark. The taste of the Dark. I came out for you I went there with you That night of ours was . . . In my pocket you were stowed, So hidden and so mine, Wrapped in scarlet, Unconsumed. That night Was ours . . . The taste of dark alleys The taste of still footfalls. The inconstant Psychedelic Taste of the Dark. Thread bare clouds On your body Blue Shadows Then covered The Cave of Sound The sound of grace, sound in sound, sound in sound, sound of grace You . . . You in my hand. That night was ours. “FAMILY NEGATIVES” I take apart the beams of the shattered house, set the walls once more upright. I fit new windows to the world supposedly open . . . But is that all, all that is supposedly still to come there is Something else Something else is worthwhile . . . I take apart the beams and weep to myself . . . (I don’t actually say it, I tell no one) love has been a little worn out, a little left to rot words which lit up like torches spilled on the grass scorched its roots— will anything more grow? No, not today not yet— no one knows. CONTENT CHAPPED LIPS (part) i am a flower drinking light i am L i g h t 10. Beata Poźniak POETICUS UMBILICUS I am Umbilicus—the dreamer. I am a kind of dream reality. A real dream, a dream of vast spaces, three dimensional rooms filled with Mothers, Sons, Fathers, Daughters. I Umbilicus remain connected to My Mother, to the Mother of us all. But the reality of the dream has no presence outside the dreamer. The dream begins—the dream ends. But as the dancer is the dance, the dreamer is the dream. And the dream dreams the dreamer just as the dance dances the dancer. The dreamer exists only because the dream exists. Dreaming the dreamer. Who is dreaming this dance. And so it goes. On and on. On and on and on. Being out of nothingness. Being and becoming. The dream ends. The dream begins. TWENTY SIX 1:26 a.m. Young paradise of embarrassed eighty eight black and white stars, full of life and light. They watch me, enjoying their own fullness and harmony of touch. A peaceful-sleepy-dark chord holds my fingers tightly. Warm wind tries to escape, the dancing quarter notes leave, improvising a new pattern, simply playing hide and seek. Breeze. Surrendering. A nocturne cries its name in the distance, a mournful owl. Suddenly, in a flash of Marienbad my heart is drumming away. The rhythm is carried by its movement and sound. Fingers, toes are tingling still. A bird that flies by breaks the mood with two plus six repetition. All parts of my body are opening to a new song, a new symphony of thoughts. The music in me grows fuller as the stars fade. Disappear. I’m peeking out of my shell. The illusion fades away with the night. New sonatas of thoughts are born and ready for the journey. Dawn is just minutes away. Madame Sound takes my hand. I am. I am twenty six years old. [Note: Marienbad is the location of Chopin's meeting with Maria Wodzinska, whose parents forced her to reject his marriage proposal. He was 26 years old.] “ISOLATED ISLAND” The spider web of roads in my brain are shaking in the wind of thoughts: Where do I go? What do I do? A gypsy soul is looking down at my left hand with railroad lines, vain. A clue. Daily breathing becomes vain—she says: No blood anymore. Dry. Puts a prune in the womb of my right hand. Feel—no pit! You. Empty. Old. Soft. Still. Right? Left? Isolated island of a hand seeking comfort. Where do I go? What do I do? You are entering a world in which all roads turn. Clap. Choose. Now! Where do I go? What do I do? I have no gas in my legs of life. My thoughts are like a sleepless metropolis. All recognizable landmarks in my heart are gone. 11. Tomasz Marek Sobieraj GROTTO OF AVERNUS I’ve been sitting in front of a cavern wide open and dark exactly the same as grotto of Avernus. I’ve been looking inside leaning dangerously over a damp abyss, breathing in the seductive smell of inferno. But I missed the courage of Aeneas. A STONE I picked up a stone, so ordinary, grey-and-white; there’s many of them in the neighbourhood. The stone was so common, so imperfect, that I just dropped it carelessly. It tumbled onto another stone, equally imperfect, in despair, on its last legs, halved. And showed inside a perfect shape of ammonite. Anyway, I unlocked the secret hidden in the common form of a stone. CATHEDRAL I did not have a ticket to the temple. So I sat down at the foot of a petrified Jesus, took out a knife and bread. We watched the joyful pageants coming out of the cathedral. And she slept, under the eye of a soaring tower, lofty and strong, empty beautiful form, without God nor believers. Finale of the cross theatre completed. PEOPLE WITHOUT EYELIDS In this city people don’t have eyelids. They are sentenced to look even in a dream. Wind squeezes their tears, through which they see pictures of the ocean, a big animal slobbering with foam, spitting seaweed. And they sacrifice their bodies for him in a last will, and watch how the waves blur the footsteps on the sand. SATISFACTION The night subsided before dawn, semiconsciously. But still vibrating, blessed, and dazed, by the frantic caress of a storm. I looked at this with full admiration, swallowing aroma, severely erotic, of the morning scent by lake Er Hai. 12. Adam Szyper PRAYER AFTER EARLY SNOW God, give us a tranquil winter— Darkness enlightened with intimate fire where loneliness can be divided like bread. Fill our basements with wheat of life. Flow sweet wine in our veins during nights of ice and snow. Give us hope, indifference to cries of fate and prehistory. Enter our dawns with misty streams of days—landscapes where every tree is a will, and abandon us each evening with dream of endurance. Let each man survive in the safe nest of his ignorance, blind to gore of far away continents deaf to groans of millions’ hunger. Do not condemn us for global truth. God, give us a tranquil winter. Step down . . . sit by our fire. Warm up your chilled hands like a man. FATHER OF MINE BEHIND GREAT WATERS OF TIME Father of mine behind great waters of time From which nobody has returned, Step out from the dusty photograph Hand me a moment which doesn’t hurt Light which doesn’t blind Truth which doesn’t kill. In the tunnel of night in which Orchids of memory wink occasionally Show me the flame of parental home In this house, rootless and homeless. And give me your strength, which Radiates a halo of love So I can ascend the rest of my life with dignity, Proud among stars and columns of clean air. AND SUDDENLY SPRING A poem blew through me that night, Swift and irretrievable, Like a school of tropical fish Like pelicans from a pink lagoon. What remains in me Quivers like a Fata Morgana Like a damselfly in the summer heat Like trees on the banks of the river Warta Like the khamsin over Kinneret. At dawn I stand helpless Like a child on a deserted beach, And suddenly spring Emerges from the night Like a butterfly From its chrysalis. 13. Małgorzata Żurecka RACHEL’S REQUEST before the New Year came Rachel had been asking The Book of Life and Death is in Your hands put me Lord in the Book of Life I have washed my body in a river my pure soul in my pure body in a goods-train-car bound for Treblinka she was looking at a ray of light in an interstice between boards still today, O’ Rachel, your pure body is turning into ashes while your soul is shining as a diamond EVERYDAY it is my nakedness that I usually leave on my warm pillow now I am arming myself with a watch spectacles a coat and a pair of shoes I will have waged my everyday fight and then disarmament will follow again I will return to my nakedness AUTUMN WATERCOLORS trees in graphics of murk a handful of birds thrown along with the wind in the ashen field the pallid moon lures the chilly autumn Translated from Polish by Mirosław Grudzień 
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Printed Version পত্রিকার মুদ্রিত কপি Contents: Polish Poetry Poetry in English 1 Poetry Translated from Other Languages Poetry Bengali to English Poetry in Bengali Editor's Journal Short Review Shabda News To the Editor Contributors' Bio শব্দগুচ্ছর এই সংখ্যাটির মুদ্রিত সংস্করণ ডাকযোগে পেতে হলে অনুগ্রহপূর্বক নিচে ক্লিক করে ওয়ার্ডার করুন। To order for the hardcopy of this issue, please click on the following link: Get a Hardcopy |
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