Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski

 Translated from the Polish by Adam Zdrodowski

 

 

 

 

 

Ambient

In the salty sand. Jellyfish...

The plane slowly went up.

Several mango sellers

 

or retired generals.

(A platinum sombrero.)

A flare

 

and

they’ll find the lipstick within a radius of...

Urine, suspenders –

 

Two offended skeletons:

Do you think they could've copulated

on the wing?

Psycho Taiga

A chicken with cut-off wings.

Misery. Somebody’s wrapping an old iron in newspaper

(acid rain! save water,

 

Greenland’s melting away).

 

The prostate’s sucking away our Noble Lord

and

 

spruces, business, they’ll go get the kidney.

(the queen’s throwing up like any ant)

and

Greenland’s melting away... What does she have in her belly?

 

She’s carrying a shark,

a whole swarm of salty bugs.

Two Grilled Tuna

He’s being quickly transported to the dragons’ hollow.

Listen, I’d like to sleep with a sort of amoeba

or something even more repulsive,

(It’s no wonder; when he was young, they bashed in

his face and knee.)

I can’t specify what species I have in mind…

As a reward, you can have some fun with my old lady,

he offers the garrulous XXL.

But shouldn’t the objects be notified

first?

 

Are you out of your mind? Surprise is the key.

He finishes a bottle left from yesterday’s session. (Unknown

cults and organisms are budding in vases.)

In the morning he calls XXL. He’s just been to a city

famous for its wonderful grilled tuna. He had

two servings.

He only thought about her and couldn’t help himself.

 

Highway of the Sun           

 

Flesh and horns over the run over wing and a pig got out of the metal

he cooperated with the papacy and the Habsburgs

a renaissance art patron

he had a triceps and a sticker but it wasn’t enough that’s why the radio

and

the lipstick khaganate used to exist on Mongolian territory (they’ll serve coffee with

amphetamine any minute now) the wing already in purgatory but the patron Rubens life’s lesson

a watch

an ass

and

politics

and

your panties

and

my ass

together with the watch

and

the plane

and

the bambi doll

Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus.

 

Drunken Children

They jumped all around us like kangaroos

“Turn the torch off, the light

will bring us bad luck”

I noticed their small hands,
knives

A group of drunken children

A black, buzzing box on a line

(Moons in a sack)…

 

They quickly walked away towards

the flyover

As if frightened by the shape

of your dentition

 

 

Cinnamomum Bark

 

Out of cinnamomum bark emerged chitin

knights. Alex’s smoking a cigar.

In his childhood he signed a pact with the devil,

 

but back then people still believed in dragons.

Yesterday he split a pillow and an armchair.

He was looking for diamond cones.

 

 

 

Grzegorz Wróblewski was born in 1962 in Gdansk and grew up in Warsaw, Poland.

Since 1985 he has lived in Copenhagen. He has published nine volumes of poetry and

two collections of short prose pieces in Poland; three books of poetry, a book of poetic prose

and an experimental novel (translations) in Denmark; and selected poems in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Mostar 2002). He has also published a selection of plays.

His work has been translated into ten languages.

English translations of his poems/plays have appeared in London Magazine, Poetry London, Magma Poetry, Parameter Magazine, Poetry Wales, The Delinquent, Chicago Review,

3rd bed, Eclectica, Mississippi Review, Absinthe: New European Writing, Common Knowledge, Word Riot, Practice: New Writing + Art, The Mercurian – A Theatrical Translation Review,

Lyric Poetry Review, Exquisite Corpse, Jacket Magazine, Otoliths, streetcake magazine,
Denver Quarterly, Cambridge Literary Review, Cleaves Journal, Action Yes, CounterPunch,
AGNI Online, Colorado Review, Shampoo, West Wind Review

and in anthologies:

Altered State: The New Polish Poetry (Arc Publications, Todmorden, UK 2003),

Carnivorous Boy Carnivorous Bird (Zephyr Press, Brookline, USA 2004),

A Generation Defining Itself – In Our Own Words (MW Enterprises, USA 2007).

Selected poems:

Our Flying Objects (Equipage Press, Cambridge, UK 2007),

A Marzipan Factory – new and selected poems (Otoliths, Rockhampton, Australia 2010).

Chapbooks:

These Extraordinary People (erbacce-press, Liverpool, UK 2008),

Mercury Project (Toad Press, Claremont, USA 2008),

A Rarity (Cervena Barva Press, W. Somerville, USA 2009).

 

 

Adam Zdrodowski, born in 1979, poet and translator, is preparing his PhD on Elizabeth Bishop. His translations include Lifting Belly by Gertrude Stein, prose pieces by Raymond Roussel and William S. Burroughs as well as poems by James Schuyler, Forrest Gander and Mark Ford. His poems have appeared in: Odra, Dwukropek and Dziennik portowy. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Przygody, etc. (2005, Adventures, etc.) and Jesień Zuzanny (2007, Susanna’s Autumn). Recently, he translated into English a selection of Grzegorz Wróblewski’s poems, A Marzipan Factory (Otoliths, 2010). He lives in Warsaw.