We are all responsible for the shared space: of the world, society, state
If a Builder
If a builder builds someone a house,
but his product is not sturdy
and the house he built
collapses and kills its owner,
the builder will be sentenced to death.
Therefore, tread carefully, the resident
above me,
Tread carefully, the resident
below me
The resident to my one side
and to my other,
not only after ten p.m.
Tread carefully, consider the builder
who builds house after house.
That’s a tricky project,
construction far from obvious,
it may topple.
Will the Builders
Will the builders be on time
with dismantling the roof?
It’s climbed right now
by the much regretted.
Will the builders meet the schedule
to replace with a vast expanse
the unbearable four walls
and the gouged-out window?
It’s approached right now
by a woman with curtains.
Right now, this way stride
a man and a boy with a bookcase
full of nonfiction.
Will the builders be first?
Will they overtake them
to deal with the partitions?
What Really?
What sends us on Sunday
these two pigeons flying together, in a flawless formation,
in an ideal arc approaching the landing
and landing simultaneously,
with their bodies bent at a shared angle
and with their identical legs gently outstretched,
finished off with the rows of identical claws,
so that here on earth
they part ways to follow their particularisms and
pettiness,
toddle and peck whatever at random,
flimflam and diddle?
What opens for us, the residents, what really,
the manual of the world on the page with the definiition of comicality,
what performs for us this comedy
not funny at all?
Too big a meal
eaten on our own?
Fake effort?
Fierce struggle?
Translated by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
We are all responsible for the shared space: of the world, society, state
Translation rights: Biuro Literackie, poczta@biuroliterackie.pl
Sales numbers: DariuszSośnicki’s poetry collections have been published in Romania and the USA. His poems have also been translated into Bulgarian and Spanish and published in anthologies.
The speaker of Dariusz Sośnicki’s new poems (published after seven years of silence) wants to be part of a community, wants to be among people, wishes for them not only to be guests in the rooms of his poems. In the manifesto poem “If a Builder”, which opens After the House, the reader is turned into the building’s resident. From now on we are of this construction, we are co-responsible for the shared space: of the world, society, state. Sośnicki’s previous collection-houses, poem-houses, which have by now become the suggestive and idiomatic feature of his poetry, existed as phantoms, were unobvious, and the speaker in these earlier works was a more distanced host, rather than the builder of After the House. There has been a change in Sośnicki. The new “house” of his poetry, though still the intellectual’s safe haven, is also a house which co-exists with other houses. The guest of the poem – the reader – is the equally legitimate resident, a neighbour from above, behind the wall, someone who shares with the author the common space and together with him is responsible for the meaning of the poems. Certainly, we can talk about many layers of this work, but the most significant are: philosophical, religious (connected with the biblical style) and stricte autothematic, creative, bound to the most important metaphor of construction – building the world and its understanding; building an artwork. The inner play with the meaning of “after the house” reveals a dimension which happens beyond the house, also outside. It is connected with the most significant task the author outlines for himself: a broadly understood affirmation of life, an admiration of the world. The allusion to a phrase by another poet, Andrzej Sosnowski, about the poem leaving the house becomes the foundation of this rhetorical reversal of meaning. The poem which concludes After the House asks if the poem itself is both the world and the house we are responsible for.
Paulina Subocz-Białek
Translated by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
Selected samples
She climbed her first peaks in a headscarf at a time when women in the mountains were treated by climbers as an additional backpack. It was with her that female alpinism began! She gained recognition in a spectacular way. The path was considered a crossing for madmen. Especially since the tragic accident in 1929, preserved … Continue reading “Halina”
First, Marysia, a student of an exclusive private school in Warsaw’s Mokotów district, dies under the wheels of a train. Her teacher, Elżbieta, tries to find out what really happened. She starts a private investigation only soon to perish herself. But her body disappears, and the only people who have seen anything are Gniewomir, a … Continue reading “Wound”
A young girl, Regina Wieczorek, was found dead on the beach. She was nineteen years old and had no enemies. Fortunately, the culprit was quickly found. At least, that’s what the militia think. Meanwhile, one day in November, Jan Kowalski appears at the police station. He claims to have killed not only Regina but also … Continue reading “Penance”
The year is 1922. A dangerous time of breakthrough. In the Eastern Borderlands of the Republic of Poland, Bolshevik gangs sow terror, leaving behind the corpses of men and disgraced women. A ruthless secret intelligence race takes place between the Lviv-Warsaw-Free City of Gdańsk line. Lviv investigator Edward Popielski, called Łysy (“Hairless”), receives an offer … Continue reading “A Girl with Four Fingers”
This question is closely related to the next one, namely: if any goal exists, does life lead us to that goal in an orderly manner? In other words, is everything that happens to us just a set of chaotic events that, combined together, do not form a whole? To understand how the concept of providence … Continue reading “Order and Love”
The work of Józef Łobodowski (1909-1988) – a remarkable poet, prose writer, and translator, who spent most of his life in exile – is slowly being revived in Poland. Łobodowski’s brilliant three- volume novel, composed on an epic scale, concerns the fate of families and orphans unmoored by the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war and … Continue reading “Ukrainian Trilogy: Thickets, The Settlement, The Way Back”
