Carless in Wrocław

This and That (2012)

Our third Polish poet is Tadeusz Różewicz. A fighter in the Armia Krajowa (Home Army), he witnessed the utter devastation of Poland during the Nazi occupation of his country (his brother was executed by the Gestapo). Not surprisingly, his poems often return to darkest periods of memory. We used Sobbing Superpower, a recent collection (with an unfortunate title) of translations to English by Joanna Trzeciak for our experiment. Here are the results:

Heart 14

Horse 5

Vodka 1

Death 53

Blood 20

Tears 18

Car 2 

First thought: That's a lot of death. Second: Well, it's twice the cars than Herbert or Szymborska. Not so fast. Both are references to railroad cars. Pretty common in a country well served by railroads, especially the west which were built up extensively by the Germans staking their claim to Poland (and further east). Here is an excerpt from a long poem called "The Professor's Knife," in which the poet mediates on the experience of riding on trains in a place where they have served as vehicles of extermination. (The poem he quotes is by Cyprian Norwid, a 19th century Polish poet.)

I’m standing in the last car

Inter Regnum—of the train

to Berlin

and I hear a child beside me

cry out

“See? The oak tree is running

Into the forest…”

a cart carries children away

I open my book

to a Norwid poem

and build a bridge

linking the past the future

“The past is today

only a bit further away…

Beyond the wheels is a village

Not just anything, anywhere

Where no one has ever been”

Freight trains

cattle cars

the color of liver and blood

in a long line

loaded with banal Evil

banal fear

despair

banal children women

girls

in the blush of youth