Poetry: Selections from Grzegorz Wróblewski

MONK

 

I asked a monk at a temple in Osaka

if I would ever be an optimistic person

again.

He looked at my left hand and replied

- I don't know. 

So all is lost?

- I became concerned.

I don't know, he said again.

My existence then became hopeless…

I started mindlessly fishing

and watching the stars

for hours.

But there is always some consolation.  

 

Apparently there are organisms living

in the ice.

Not all of them

have to be suicides.

HISTORY OF TIME

 

Yesterday was yesterday.

Today is today.

Tomorrow will be tomorrow.

STONES

 

Stones live forever, old people

told me as a child. 

One morning, after many years,

I woke up without a hand. 

I saw a flock of birds in the sky.

There were other stones nearby. 

I realized that these old men

had once told me the truth. 

I existed, but in a different

configuration.

Grzegorz Wróblewski was born in 1962 in Gdańsk and grew up in Warsaw. Since 1985 he has been living in Copenhagen. English translations of his work are available in Our Flying Objects (trans. Joel Leonard Katz, Rod Mengham, Malcolm Sinclair, Adam Zdrodowski, Equipage, 2007), A Marzipan Factory (trans. Adam Zdrodowski, Otoliths,2010), Kopenhaga (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Zephyr Press, 2013), Let's Go Back to the Mainland (trans. Agnieszka Pokojska, Červená Barva Press, 2014), Zero Visibility (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Phoneme Media, 2017), Dear Beloved Humans (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Lavender/Dialogos Books, 2023). Asemic writing book Shanty Town (Post-Asemic Press, 2022).