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Branka Babic

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RE: Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-prize winning Polish poet, dies at 88
4/1/2013 10:16:36 AM
One of Wislawa Szymborska's favorite Polish folk songs:


Pieśń dziadowska or Beggars song is a type of traditional Polish spoken-word song similar to those in other places in the world such as Girot in West Africa or modern Rap in North America. The songs vary in content from tragedies, to romantic ballads, to songs about society, to religious invocations. Typically they are accompanied by an ancient Polish instrument called a Lira similar to the Hurdy Gurdy.


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Branka Babic

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RE: Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-prize winning Polish poet, dies at 88
4/1/2013 10:23:38 AM
Yara Linss sings the poem of Wislawa Szymborska "We used to know the world inside out" (German: "Einst hatten wir die Welt"; Polish: "Swiat umielismy kiedys na wyrywki").

Yara Linss, born in the Brazilian Metropole São Paulo in 1980 came to Germany at the age of four. Influenced by two cultures she loves diversity and combining different extremes.

Piano: Peter Fulda.


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Branka Babic

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RE: Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-prize winning Polish poet, dies at 88
4/1/2013 10:31:16 AM
Beautiful!


The poem "birthday" was written by the Polish nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska and visualized for "Krakauer Haus" (House of Krakow") in Nuremberg.


Birthday

So much world all at once – how it rustles and bustles!
Moraines and morays and morasses and mussels,
The flame, the flamingo, the flounder, the feather –
How to line them all up, how to put them together?
All the tickets and crickets and creepers and creeks!
The beeches and leeches alone could take weeks.
Chinchillas, gorillas, and sarsaparillas –
Thanks do much, but all this excess of kindness could kill us.
Where’s the jar for this burgeoning burdock, brooks’ babble,
Rooks’ squabble, snakes’ quiggle, abundance, and trouble?
How to plug up the gold mines and pin down the fox,
How to cope with the linx, bobolinks, strptococs!
Tale dioxide: a lightweight, but mighty in deeds:
What about octopodes, what about centipedes?
I could look into prices, but don’t have the nerve:
These are products I just can’t afford, don’t deserve.
Isn’t sunset a little too much for two eyes
That, who knows, may not open to see the sun rise?
I am just passing through, it’s a five-minute stop.
I won’t catch what is distant: what’s too close, I’ll mix up.
While trying to plumb what the void's inner sense is,
I'm bound to pass by all these poppies and pansies.
What a loss when you think how much effort was spent
perfecting this petal, this pistil, this scent
for the one-time appearance, which is all they're allowed,
so aloofly precise and so fragilely proud.


translated from Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak
and Clare Cavanagh


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Branka Babic

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RE: Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-prize winning Polish poet, dies at 88
4/3/2013 5:44:17 AM

‘A Byzantine Mosaic’



by Wislawa Szymborska



“O Theotropia, my empress consort.”

“O Theodendron, my consort emperor.”

“How fair thou art, my hollow-cheeked beloved.”

“How fine art thou, blue-lipped spouse.”

“Thou art so wondrous frail
beneath thy bell-like gown,
the alarum of which, if but removed,
would waken all my kingdom.”

“How excellently mortified thou art,
my lord and master,
to mine own shadow a twinned shade.”

“Oh how it pleaseth me
to see my lady’s palms,
like unto palm leaves verily,
clasped to her mantle’s throat.”

“Wherewith, raised heavenward,
I would pray thee mercy for our son,
for he is not such as we, O Theodendron.”

“Heaven forfend, O Theotropia.
Pray, what might he be,
begotten and brought forth
in godly dignity?”

“I will confess anon, and thou shalt hear me.
Not a princeling but a sinner have I borne thee.
Pink and shameless as a piglet,
plump and merry, verily,
all chubby wrists and ringlets came he
rolling unto us.”

“He is roly-poly?”

“That he is.”

He is voracious?”

“Yea, in truth.”

“His skin is milk and roses?”

“As thou sayest.”

“What, pray, does our archimandrite say,
a man of most penetrating gnosis?
What say our consecrated eremites,
most holy skeletesses?
How should they strip the fiendish infant
of his swaddling silks?

“Metamorphosis miraculous
still lies within our Savior’s power.
Yet thou, on spying
the babe’s unsightliness,
shalt not cry out
and rouse the sleeping demon from his rest?

“I am thy twin in horror.
Lead on, Theotropia.”

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Nerma Selimović

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RE: Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-prize winning Polish poet, dies at 88
4/5/2013 9:22:02 PM
Quote:
Quote:
Thanks Branka for starting this thread.

Yes Wislawa Szymborska knew how to use polish language in poetry. Her poetry was mandatory reading in our schools during my years in Poland.

She left lots of good work behind her to follow for younger generations.

Bogdan



Wislawa Szymborska


Lucky you for reading her poetry in polish Bogdan!
Poetry is that natural conserve, in which one language preserves without any additives which could enhance it's taste and flavor.

I do not think that nowadays people are lovers of poetry. And HOW MUCH POETRY COULD CHANGE already existing picture about anything!!! It could be found in next poem:


Lot's Wife

They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot's neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn't so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.
Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.
I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now--every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
I looked back in desolation.
In shame because we had stolen away.
Wanting to cry out, to go home.
Or only when a sudden gust of wind
unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.
It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom
and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.
I looked back in anger.
To savor their terrible fate.
I looked back for all the reasons given above.
I looked back involuntarily.
It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.
It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks.
A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge.
It was then we both glanced back.
No, no. I ran on,
I crept, I flew upward
until darkness fell from the heavens
and with it scorching gravel and dead birds.
I couldn't breathe and spun around and around.
Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing.
It's not inconceivable that my eyes were open.
It's possible I fell facing the city.



After reading this poem first time, I was crying for hours.
All what I have ever read, loved and believed, seems needed this poem as a crown for one new, much different approach to reality.

Of course that I painfully miss "proper" English words to let the content of the pictures and emotions, which this poem and Wislawa Szymborska's poetry in general, "produces" in me.

Bogdan, thanks for stopping by.


Branka, this poem is so special.
It makes me think and cry.

How powerful way of saying things!

Nerma

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