Stones
From Central Park
I
brought a handful of stones from Central Park
they
lay in America for millions of years
waiting
for my hand
I
picked them up from the ground and put
them
into my pocket
they
flew with me over
the
Atlantic
now
they are lying on a shelf
and
will stay there
I
touch them
and
think–
how
much had happened in my life
how
many times beaten by a club
spat
on and cheated
trembling
and going insane
I
could not touch them
I
think about my childhood friends
and
enemies on the same street
about
my passions and the birth
of
children moments of hunger
and
appeasement
stones
from Central Park
so
warm and
so
cold
like
people–so alive
and
later so dead
2000
(Translated
into English by Stanley H. Barkan & Adam Szyper)
Red Streetcar
I dreamed of a red streetcar
gliding on rails in New Orleans
full of moving skeletons playing
on saxophones trombones
trumpets and tubas
At the end a yellowed skeleton
struck silver cymbals and drums
and another in a conductor’s
cap was leading with a thin
tibia
the gilt of the sun poured from
the sky wandering blackbirds
flew from palm to palm
moments felt like
centuries and millennia
I was the only living being
on this tram but I was stuck
in a deathly stillness
pale thirst
the
big band played louder
and
louder the tram still
accelerated
and was already
running
through free space
hovered
in the air like
a
funeral shroud
being
erased gliding
freely
towards a deaf
eternity
New
Orleans 2018
(Translated
into English by Stanley H. Barkan)
Princess
She
sits lost in thought
and
stares at the nearby
lights
of Columbus Circle
her
beauty is inexpressible
her countenance defies
description
in
the days of Queen Hatshepsut
she
could have been a grand
dame
or a dancer with a golden
girdle
on her hips
but
here she reposes on the grass
her
long fingers stroking
its
green blades
she
floats far beyond this place
out of reach of time
and
space
her
life will follow its own path
while my own days shall come
to an end
only
once did we rub against
one another—only once
did
our reflections shimmer
in each other’s
eyes
like
the wind-carried
pollen of plants
like
the sparkling
highlights
on the feathers
of an American
thrush
New
York 2000
(Translated
into English by Adam Szyper)
Author’s Bionote:
*Dariusz Tomasz Lebioda, Ph.D. - Polish poet,
writer, professor of literature, translator, and editor. Born in Bydgoszcz,
Poland, in 1958, he earned his Ph.D. in Polish Literature from the University
of Gdańsk in 1994. For thirty years, he has taught at Kazimierz Wielki
University. He served as a Visiting Professor at the State University of New
York at Buffalo (SUNY) in 2002 and is a long-time researcher at various Polish
universities and colleges. He has authored over one hundred books, including
poetry, short stories, diaries, essays, and scientific monographs on European
Romantic poets (Mickiewicz, Słowacki, Krasiński), contemporary Polish poets
(Miłosz, Herbert, Różewicz, Szymborska), and world-renowned novelists
(Faulkner, Caldwell, Steibeck, Golding, Singer, Murdoch, Pamuk, Coetzee,
Naipaul, Lessing, Le Clézio). Lebioda is the recipient of numerous Polish
literary awards, including the Andrzej Bursa Award, the Stanisław Wyspiański
Award, the UNESCO World Poetry Day Prize, as well as the Ianicius and Bruno
Awards. In 2020, he was honored with the Qu Yuan Prize for Poetry in China. His
selected poems have been translated into many languages, including English,
French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese. A frequent
guest at international literary festivals, he has appeared in the United
States, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Kenya, South Africa, Iraq, China, Armenia,
Georgia, Turkey, Belgium, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, the Czech Republic, and
Slovakia. Since 2015, he has served as the President of the HOMER European
Medal of Poetry and Art, which has been awarded to such luminaries as Lllosa,
Soyinka, Adonis, Gamoneda, Lilburn, Venclova, Kunze, and Lane.
