19 Jul 2012

firecat: damiel from wings of desire tasting blood on his fingers. text "i has a flavor!" (Default)
My friend [personal profile] ljgeoff, in a flocked post, quoted a piece of a poem titled "Under One Small Star," by Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska and translated by Stanislaw Branczak and Clare Cavanagh. It goes like this:
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologise for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.
I apologise to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
Here is the whole poem by those translators:
http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/1999/10/under-one-small-star-wislawa-szymborska.html

And here's a translation of the same poem by Joanna Trzeciak:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20451

I love this. I looked her up, and what do you know, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996 at the age of 73. Maybe I shouldn't call myself a poetry aficionado if I didn't know that already.
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firecat: damiel from wings of desire tasting blood on his fingers. text "i has a flavor!" (Default)
firecat (attention machine in need of calibration)

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