Głosy - Voices: A Bilingual Edition
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About this ebook
In December 1970, amid a harsh winter and an even harsher economic situation, the ruling communist regime in Poland chose to drastically raise prices on basic foodstuffs. Just before the Christmas holidays, for example, the price of fish, a staple of the traditional Christmas Eve meal, rose nearly 20%. Frustrated citizens took to the streets to protest, demanding the repeal of the price-hikes. Things took an especially dramatic turn in the northern regions near the Baltic shore — later, the cradle of the Solidarity movement, which would eventually spark the fall of communism in Poland and throughout Central and Eastern Europe — where the government moved against their citizens with the Militia and the Army. Forty-one Poles were murdered by their own government when militiamen and soldiers opened fire with live rounds on the crowds in Gdańsk, Gdynia, Szczecin and Elbląg.
Jan Polkowski’s moving poetic cycle Głosy [Voices], presented here in its entirety in the English translation of C.S. Kraszewski, is a poetic monument to the dead, their families, and all who were affected by the ‘December Events,’ as they are sometimes euphemistically referred to. In his afterword to the collection, ‘Jan Polkowski’s Voices — The Antigones of the Baltic Coast,’ Józef Maria Ruszar notes that this work, in which Polkowski, as something of a medium, ‘enters the skin’ of the dead, the survivors, and their families to ‘speak from within his narrators,’ is something which ‘has no counterpart in the literature of Poland — or even that of the world.’ In its moving, subtle, yet powerful tribute to those who paid the highest price for the ultimate victory of right over wrong, liberty over oppression, Jan Polkowski’s Voices takes its rightful place alongside other immortal artistic threnodies, such as Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, John Hersey’s Hiroshima, and Henry Górecki’s Symphony III.
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Głosy - Voices - Jan Polkowski
Głosy / Voices
Jan Polkowski
Translated by
Charles S. Kraszewski
Photography by
Maria Gąsecka
Glagoslav Publications
Głosy / Voices
by Jan Polkowski
Translated from the Polish by Charles S. Kraszewski with an afterword by Józef Maria Ruszar
***Edited by Aeddan Shaw and Magdalena Filipczuk
Cover photo ‘Stocznia Gdańska. Zamknięte’ by Maria Gąsecka
Publishers Maxim Hodak & Max Mendor
© 2021, Jan Polkowski
© 2021, Charles S. Kraszewski
Afterword © 2021, Józef Maria Ruszar
Photographs © 2021, Maria Gąsecka
© 2021, Glagoslav Publications
www.glagoslav.com
ISBN: 978-1-914337-36-9 (Ebook)
First published in English by Glagoslav Publications in October 2021
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This book is in copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Contents
Szkwał. W zimnej koszuli idę wzdłuż zatoki
Squall. In a cold shirt I walk along the bay
Dzieci nie pamiętam lub boję się wspomnieć
I don’t remember my children or maybe I’m afraid to
Wierzę, że nie masz do mnie żalu. Oprócz ciebie miałam
I know that you don’t blame me. Besides you, I had
Przeźroczystymi rękami robiłaś mi kanapki
With transparent hands you made me sandwiches
Lubię zatłoczony kościół, nie widzę wtedy nikogo
I like a crowded church for then I can see no one
Krótki ruch powietrza po twoim niedbałym geście
The short shift of air following your casual gesture
Kochany Tato, strasznie Cię nienawidziłem
Dearest Daddy how sincerely I hated you
Nie powiedziałam ci, że jestem w ciąży
I didn’t tell you I was pregnant
Opłatek, Wigilia, mama w popielatej sukni
The Christmas Eve opłatek mama in her ashen dress
Wolność. Myślałem o niej kiedy ciepłą nocą
Freedom. I thought of it on each warm night
Patrzę na moje paznokcie — nierówno pomalowane
I look at my nails — unevenly painted
Składam się z niepamięci od paznokci po nerki
I’m made up of oblivion from nails to kidneys
Nie wiem jak to jest być sierotą. Mama, siostra
I don’t know what it’s like to be an orphan. Mother, sister
Zawieźli mnie na cmentarz, chcieli zakopać ciało
They took me to the graveyard they wanted to bury the body
Kim miałem zostać? Nikim. Bo czy miałem przeżyć?
Who was I supposed to become? No one
Sam nie wiem właściwie dlaczego
I myself don’t know why
Słońce jeszcze nie wstało, leży na mokrym piasku
The sun’s not yet arisen it lies on the wet sand
Mieszkając w tobie myślę czasem czy rozumiałeś
Living in you I wonder sometimes have you come to understand
Senność, senność, senność, fale kroków gasnące
Sleepiness sleepiness sleepiness the dying waves of steps
Czy poezja nie powinna być szczególnie wyczulona na anonimowe
Should poetry not be particularly sensitive to unspoken
‘Jan Polkowski’s Voices — The Antigones of the Baltic Coast’
Bibliography
About the Author
List of Works
About the Translator
Untitled
About the Photographer
Notes
Thank you for purchasing this book
Glagoslav Publications Catalogue
Szkwał. W zimnej koszuli idę wzdłuż zatoki
Szkwał. W zimnej koszuli idę wzdłuż zatoki.
Kim byłem? Ziarenkiem piasku pod stopą rybitwy
kapitanem fregaty w czapce po stryju Władku
sercem szybkich jaskółek z kratkowanego papieru
specem od gry w nożyka i Wyścig Pokoju
wiecznym utrapieniem mojej biednej mamy
bo zamiast ministrantury wolałem mecze w nogę.
Trudno wyliczyć wszystkie magiczne wcielenia.
Zasypiając czułem jak przy skroni wiruje poduszka
Ziemi a w głowie tną kosmos milknące
gwiazdy. Życie. Szesnaście ogromnych lat.
Przebiegały tak lekko, że zapominałem oddychać
a kiedy ochłonąłem przyszedł dzień odczytania.
W tym dniu moje życie trwało tylko godzinę.
O czwartej trzydzieści obudziłem się w bloku.
A do piątej czterdzieści otwierał się los.
Poznałem ludzką podłość, pragnienia
i tajemnice czystej, mądrej wolności.
Burzliwą przyjaźń z Żeromskim zakończyłem kłótnią.
Przed kolegami ukryłem jak zabrzmiało we mnie
przekleństwo zdania Norwida Czemu cieniu odjeżdżasz…
Ściągnąłem od Leonarda schemat lekkich skrzydeł.
Nie uciekłem daleko. Zostałem niewolnikiem
lunatycznych spacerów z Dorotą córką spawacza
ze Stoczni Marynarki Wojennej i Afrodyty Zimnych Mórz
uwięzionej w bezkształtnej sukience z bistoru.
Tak, zostałem ojcem, czy dobrym doprawdy nie wiem.
1Squall. In a cold shirt I walk along the bay
Squall. In a cold shirt I walk along the bay.
Who was I? A grain of sand beneath a tern’s foot
a frigate captain wearing Uncle Władek’s cap
the heart of swift swallows made of notepad paper
an expert in mumbly-peg and the Race of Peace
the eternal thorn in my poor mother’s side
who preferred soccer match to Sunday Mass.
It’s