KRYSTYNA KONECKA

KRYSTYNA KONECKA

Fragility

To Krzysztof Korotkich

We were just about to go... To surpass our dreams...

When arrhythmia of everyday life abruptly fell

upon us so unprepared. And death. And the shattered

eternal rituals suddenly irrelevant.

Some friendly soul sends photo so I could admire

poetry of the sunset by the lake. However,

I see a very thin blood stream above the forest

akin to expiring electrocardiogram.

Where to hide? And is it possible? And in whose arms

when people who share the world now start disappearing -

at the dead underground station in central London

the very last pianist plays Imagine by Lennon.

And I think - like Słowacki – of the fragile planet

if ‘God will wipe off with finger’ or ‘pour life in her’...

TRANSLATED BY EWA SHERMAN, ENGLAND

With The Birds

Among grass and rushes, in thicket palaces,

in the leafy hammock, in slim tree bowers,

with the manifold of chirping woken up before dawn

world of birds opens wide to the sun.

Oh, be careful! For the nest under the foot. For the feather.

For the cloud of hungry chicklings. The first attempt to fly.

And again – talking. And the nest. And the fluttering.

And the wings stretched under the highest cloud.

We will not be equal with birds – aquatic yet on land.

Wingless descendants of Ikarus till today.

When in the skies, we are uncertain, inconsiderate.

Armoured with steel and darkness. Yet

the fastest falcons and the highest eagles

are pursued by our imagination on their trail.

TRANSLATED BY EWA SHERMAN, ENGLAND

Under The Clouds

I cannot marvel the meaning of clouds –

these eternal travellers, fortune-tellers of mood.

They predict the future for the universe and for me.

Fugitive guardians of each season.

When in calm above the land – they divide themselves like twins:

into ethereal original and replica in water.

Or when capricious October deludes them –

accompanied by harp of rain they drown in their own weeping.

And the route of each cloud astonishes me,

a perfect steadiness and sense of navigation.

The accuracy of suspension above a lonely pine,

by the lake, where I am. In inaccessible mountains.

Here where butterfly, lizard, and snow, and acacia,

From where I will flow away like an extinct spring.

TRANSLATED BY EWA SHERMAN, ENGLAND

KRYSTYNA KONECKA

KRYSTYNA KONECKA is a poet, journalist and photographer. She lives in Poland (Bialystok). She has a MA degree in Polish Philology (Warsaw University) and she completed postgraduate studies of Culture and Education (Silesian University). She has been working in journalism and contributed articles to many magazines published in Warsaw. She has been working as photographer for a number of years and her numerous photographs have been published in magazines and presented at various exhibitions. Krystyna Konecka is a member of The Polish Writers’ Union (Warsaw branch). In poetry she favours sonnets. She is an author of nearly twenty books of poetry and reportages. Her poems have been published in Polish and foreign periodicals and anthologies. For her achievements poetry and journalism (reportages on social issues, literary and theatrical criticism, articles on the culture) Krystyna Konecka has received literary awards and was highly regarded by critics. She attends the international literary meetings.