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travels

my poetry festivals

 

Struga, Macedonia (2003)

      fot. Rajeevan Thachom Poyil


I want to remember
to keep. The forest. The spring
maybe. Water that guides stones
to the other side of the surface
where everything is the other way round. How
to swim not to be drowned? And what
will last. Will you keep on
opening gardens for me?


translated by the author


Calicut, India (2007)

fot. Salomat Vafo


the air gets transparent. People
get transparent
before flying away.
New York is hot. Warsaw
explodes of the Indian Summer.
Calicut has empty beaches.
In Moulin de Lauray cats are hunting apples.
Over Hannover the moon is neat and tidy.
And Cracow hides itself behind the glasses
of rain; (like Lvov) enveloped in water pipe
scent. Unnoticeably
the Land of the Dead absorbs us
with their slowness, sweetness, infinite
patience; indifference to everything that
is not no-life; that is not
just being. The easiest thing
is to shoot out wings, to fly away. Or
to melt into the fog
in tears (of love, sorrow, loss
of a dream); in flickering
countless candle flames

as long as possible


(from the book Dreams of Love and Death)

translated by the author

 

Granada, Nicaragua (2009) :


I regret the ones, that are gone by, have vanished leaving but an impression, a shadow, a scent.
Ebony Julianne, who'd rather be Julie, with her pretty teeth and hair coiling like tiny snakes.
So much unlike me with her butt jutting out of her body like a rebellious coconut, dazzling
turbans and dresses all in large gaudy blooms.
Sometimes we lose what we have never owned, yet a lack of it remains, I believe.


(from the cycle Names)

translated by Teresa Tyszowiecka

 

Paris, France (2009)


I read Paris like I read a poem
of endlessly budding strophes
metaphors flourish
to disperse
in Autumn’s
benign air

I enter Paris
like I enter a maze.
paths overgrown and paths glazed
of subterranean burgh
bearing ever new
burrows
and aerial corridors
of avian trails
crisscrossing
among pylons
of light and stone

I immerse in Paris
like I immerse in the night,
diving beneath the somber skin of my verse
under the wake of words
glimmering
from the oily depths of the Seine,
words that infuse each other
before they melt
into thin air
like leaves
ready to take off
I don't know where

to raise
another Paris there,
unknown
and vague,
under the waxing moon –
the city of the poem


translated by Teresa Tyszowiecka

 

my Story Telling Marathon

 

Quito, Ecuador (2011)

 

      fot. Gaby Vallejo


Springtime at dawn, Summer at noon, Autumn at dusk. And
at night?
At night the Indians come.


translated by Teresa Tyszowiecka

 

my literary residences

 

Visby, Sweden (2003) :



he squatted on my windowsill yet did not allow himself
to be touched. He flew to the nearby poplar and screamed
like a human being. His feathers were in all the
colours of autumn. The other sparrows turned him off.
He would not let himself be caught by people.
He jumped from the top of the poplar up into the abyss
of the sky

 

(from the book Island of Lights)

translated by Anna Staniewska

 

Rhodes, Greece (2004) :

        fot. Barbara Grzegorzewska


I opened my window I let
the sea in: with its
green wings its scales
of glass. Its countless
stony hearts. The pebbles
settle under my toe-nails
grow their roots there: clumsy
hard snails. Is it
contagious? I wonder. Will I also
become alike?

and who will recognize me then


translated by the author

 

Ventspils, Latvia (2010)

 

fot. Imants Blūms


Mirrors and stones; the sea is a mirror and so is the Moon ; the Moon is water, I muse while
treading on the smooth sand among the bodies of jellyfish, floppy stones that roam as they
please. Never, never pick up the stones from their clammy realms, I repeat like a mantra,
until a vicious pebble hits me hard on my little toe.
A rock splintered off the Moon, or what?


(from the cycle House and Mirrors)

translated by Teresa Tyszowiecka

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