Grzegorz Wróblewski


LOCAL NEWS

My morning walk around Christianshavn.
It’s an early hour, only a quarter
past six. And what do I see in our
little square? Several Greenland chiefs
gazing motionlessly at a new,
freshly built john.
Indeed, it is an original building.
It will surely win the first prize
in a competition for new, architectural
curiosities of Denmark. I join
them, open my Carlsberg
and we drink together in silence.


THE REFORM OF SCRIPTS I




***

“The second sun caused panic only on the first day. Then emotions quickly subsided. A long-awaited age of brightness arrived. We’ll only mention the moon and the stars to our grandchildren. If they’ll be willing to believe any of our words,” whispered Arne, switching off the light in a mental asylum in Copenhagen, in the summer of 2004, and I wrote it down.


THE REFORM OF SCRIPTS II




DADA 2009

for Kurt Schwitters

Summer will come soon
And the world will start
Cheerfully multiplying
And then my uncle
Will call
And say
That he happened to die too early

But soon Peewee will be born
with a head like a cup
Looking like my uncle
And again winter will come
But just for a while
‘Cause summer will follow
With a butterfly and a hedgehog crunching red apples

But then sleighs
We’ll reminisce about my uncle
Peewee will start working at a ship called The Pacific
But just for a while
‘Cause summer will follow
With a butterfly and a hedgehog

Peewee will decide to deal in vanilla
And the world will start
Cheerfully multiplying
And a new Peewee with a butterfly and a hedgehog
And a head fragile as a cup.

(All poems translated from the Polish by Adam Zdrodowski)

Grzegorz Wróblewski was born in 1962 in Gdansk and grew up in Warsaw, Poland. Since 1985 he has lived in Copenhagen. He has published nine volumes of poetry and two collections of short prose pieces in Poland; three books of poetry, a book of oetic prose and an experimental novel (translations) in Denmark; and selected poems in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Mostar 2002). He has also published a selection of plays. His work has been translated into eight languages.

Adam Zdrodowski, born in 1979, poet and translator, is preparing his PhD on Elizabeth Bishop. His translations include Lifting Belly by Gertrude Stein, prose pieces by Raymond Roussel and William S. Burroughs as well as poems by James Schuyler and Mark Ford. His poems have appeared in: Odra, Dwukropek and Dziennik portowy. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Przygody, etc. (2005, Adventures, etc.) and Jesień Zuzanny (2007, Susanna’s Autumn). He lives in Warsaw.

 
 
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