Poetry
Szymon Babuchowski
How Far

In a search for meaning in a world plagued by emptiness

* * *

little boy cast ashore on a Greek island
little shell from which life drained quietly away
I’d like to hold you wrap you in a towel
and carry you to a room full of toys

little boy cast ashore your photo
will spread across the world it’ll be an argument
for and against with it we’ll strike each other
before a wave arrives and shuts us up

that’s always how it is: flocks of birds
swarm and peck at everything that still
smells of life – don’t blame them for this
after all even this poem is feeding off of you

little boy cast ashore you could’ve been
an older brother to my daughter who lies down
to sleep exactly as you do yes asleep for you didn’t
die you only sleep and sleep

A Faroese Ballad

so you’ve brought me this far to the brink
so that I be touched by this cold paradise of yours
on the North Shore
so that I not overlook
or oversleep and miss those waves of yours

and I beheld how the world ends
a light rocked to and fro on the edge
a white church on the cliff
further on were only waters rough
with wind

and I ran after the voice of waves
with green grass at my feet
straight into the vale
from where I’ll sail one day
where I’ll be assailed by an unknown tide

* * *

our shadows on the road tall like
trees blended in procession: mom – dad – child
in orange light just before night arrives
our mundane smallness transfiguring to gothic

and the church glides across pavement-waters
and the light elevates us the sun reconciles us
plunged in afterglow from horizon to toe
we sail this boat – with morning ever closer

translated by Lynn Suh

Poetry
Szymon Babuchowski
How Far

In a search for meaning in a world plagued by emptiness

Publisher: Wydawnictwo Arcana, Kraków 2018
Translation rights: Szymon Babuchowski, babuchowski@wp.pl

In his volume of poetry How Far, Szymon Babuchowski shows how a man of the 21st century – a husband, a lover, a father – is able to fill the world around him, a world plagued by the empti- ness of building blocks and interpersonal relationships, with a search for meaning.

The speaker in the book is a man who believes deeply in God, a man living in a subdued landscape of prefab apartment blocks among which life can be disappointing and difficult to bear. Despite his impression of being surrounded by a dying city, he knows that each moment could well transform the face of the world. Against this backdrop, seemingly adverse to momentous experiences and shut off from transcend- ence, the poet writes poems trembling ‘like pages in the wind’ through which Miłosz’s ‘second space’ – the supernatural dimension – shines through and is able to light up previously unrevealed corners of reality. For instance, in what is probably the volume’s most beautiful poem (The Stanisław Mineshaft in Murcki), a fourteen-minute wait for a city bus transfer turns into an occasion to observe an affinity between the subterranean spaces of cemeteries and mines: in both one feels the presence of non-presence, its seductive mystery. In Babuchowski’s poetry, the unearthly, other-dimensional side of reality ceaselessly emerges from behind the landscapes, objects, and people described.

Relying upon classical diction, without succumbing to the literary fashions which he makes mention of in his book (‘one doesn’t write this way today’), Babuchowski points out that in poetry a clear medium and message matter.

The most important moment in the volume’s lyrical narration comes in the title poem How Far, in which the poet is called upon by the Creator who compels him, like Adam in the book of Genesis, to respond to the question ‘Where are you?’ (This citation forms the collection’s epigraph.) In the poem, Babuchowski offers an account, asking himself if he has remained faithful to the truths he has chosen for himself and how this choice has brought him closer to God. Full of affirmation of the everyday, his stanzas are ostensibly his answers, at times reminiscent of songs, which is not surprising given that the author is the leader of the band Dobre Ludzie [Good People].

This volume of verse constitutes a story about little loves which become vast under the poet’s pen, a poet who does not hesitate to write [as] in Prayer: ‘may my last / word / be / God’.

Barbara Gruszka-Zych, translated by Lynn Suh

Selected samples

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Julita Deluga
Wojtek Wawszczyk, Tomasz Leśniak
121344
Anna Kańtoch
Andrzej Bobkowski
Wisława Szymborska
Zdzisław Kranodębski
Andrzej Nowak
Wiesław Myśliwski
Jarosław Jakubowski
Anna Piwkowska
Roman Honet
Miłosz Biedrzycki
Wojciech Chmielewski
Aleksandra Majdzińska
Tomasz Różycki
Maciej Hen
Jakub Nowak
Elżbieta Cherezińska
歐菈·沃丹斯卡-波欽斯卡(Ola Woldańska-Płocińska)
作者:沃伊切赫·維德瓦克(Wojciech Widłak), 插圖:亞歷珊德拉·克珊諾夫斯卡(Aleksandra Krzanowska)
文字:莫妮卡·烏特尼-斯特魯加瓦(Monika Utnik-Strugała), 概念和插圖:皮歐特·索哈(Piotr Socha)
作者:亞格涅絲卡·斯特爾馬什克(Agnieszka Stelmaszyk)
尤安娜·日斯卡(Joanna Rzyska)、阿嘉妲·杜德克(Agata Dudek)、瑪格熱妲·諾瓦克(Małgorzata Nowak) Druganoga出版社,華沙2021
艾麗莎·皮歐特夫斯卡(Eliza Piotrowska)
米科瓦伊·帕辛斯基(Mikołaj Pasiński)、瑪格熱妲·赫爾巴(Gosia Herba)
歐菈·沃丹斯卡-波欽斯卡(Ola Woldańska-Płocińska)
瑪麗安娜·奧克雷亞克(Marianna Oklejak)
拉法爾·科希克(Rafał Kosik)
亞歷珊德拉·沃丹斯卡-波欽斯卡(Aleksandra Woldańska-Płocińska)
巴托米耶·伊格納邱克(Bartłomiej Ignaciuk), 阿嘉塔·洛特-伊格納邱克(Agata Loth-Ignaciuk)
文字和插圖:皮歐特·卡爾斯基(Piotr Karski)
文字和插圖:皮歐特·卡爾斯基(Piotr Karski)
羅珊娜·延澤耶夫斯卡-弗魯貝爾 (Roksana Jędrzejewska-Wróbel)
作者:普舎米斯瓦夫·維赫特洛維奇(Przemysław Wechterowicz) 插圖:艾米莉·吉烏巴克(Emilia Dziubak)
尤斯提娜·貝納雷(Justyna Bednarek) 插圖:丹尼爾·德拉圖爾(Daniel De Latour)
尤安娜·巴托西克(Joanna Bartosik)
瑪格熱妲·斯文多夫斯卡(Małgorzata Swędrowska)、尤安娜·巴托西克(Joanna Bartosik)
Jan Kochanowski
Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz
Olga Tokarczuk
Władysław Stanisław Reymont
An Ancient Tale
Stanisław Rembek
Elżbieta Cherezińska
Henryk Sienkiewicz
Maria Dąbrowska
Stefan Żeromski
Bronisław Wildstein
Zbigniew Herbert / Wisława Szymborska
Karol Wojtyła
Wiesław Myśliwski
Czesław Miłosz
Anna Świrszczyńska / Melchior Wańkowicz
Tadeusz Borowski / Gustaw Herling-Grudziński
Wiesław Helak
Góra Tabor
Adriana Szymańska
Paweł Rzewuski
Mariusz Staniszewski
Staniszewski_Kartel
Radek Rak
Agla
Urszula Honek
Honek
Kazimierz Orłoś
Orlos
Rafał Wojasiński
Tefil
Antonina Grzegorzewska
Grzegorzewska_drama
Józef Mackiewicz
Mackiewicz_Sprawa
Tobiasz Piątkowski, Marek Oleksicki
Piatkowski_Oleksicki_Ekspozytura
Daniel Odija
Bronisław Wildstein
Józef Mackiewicz
Mackiewicz_Droga
Józef Mackiewicz
Mackiewicz_Bunt-rojstow
Witold Szabłowski
Szablowski_Rosja-od-kuchni
Andrzej Muszyński
Muszynski_Dom-ojcow
Wiesław Helak
Helak
Bartosz Jastrzębski
Jastrzebski_Dies-irae
Dariusz Sośnicki
Sośnicki_Po-domu
Łukasz Orbitowski
Orbitowski_chodz
Jakub Małecki
Malecki_SO
אנדז'יי ספקובסקי
Elżbieta Cherezińska
Wiesław Myśliwski
Jakub Małecki
Aleksandra Lipczak
Jacek Dukaj
Wit Szostak
Bartosz Biedrzycki
Zyta Rudzka
Maciej Płaza
Wojciech Chmielewski
Paweł Huelle
Przemysław "Trust" Truściński
Angelika Kuźniak
Wojciech Kudyba
Michał Protasiuk
Stanisław Rembek
Rembek
Krzysztof Karasek
Elżbieta Isakiewicz
Artur Daniel Liskowacki
Jarosław Jakubowski
Zbigniew Stawrowski
Szczepan Twardoch
Wojciech Chmielarz
Robert Małecki
Zygmunt Miłoszewski
Anna Piwkowska
Dominika Słowik
Wojciech Chmielewski
Barbara Banaś
Rafał Mikołajczyk
Jerzy Szymik
Waldemar Bawołek
Julia Fiedorczuk
Jakub Szamałek
Witold Szabłowski
Jacek Dukaj
Grzegorz Górny, Janusz Rosikoń
Paweł Piechnik
Andrzej Strumiłło

69

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