Dariusz Tomasz Lebioda
(Poland)
BLOOD OF THE UNICORN
your skull is a bowl where consciousness burns
where the red fire of sleep smolders
you look into dark and see
centaurs disappearing in the stellar wind
you’re the promise of heaven, the threat of hell
you bear within you a child
and a blood-sucking ancient
in a zoroastrian
mitre
your destiny is eternity
though you’ll never experience it
your destiny is death
though you’ll never touch it
your destiny is being
but you don’t exist—
your tenderness irks the blind dwarf
seated on a throne in a silken
chasuble
your sensibility allays the anger
of the crystal unicorn
you peer into the dark and see
the golden face of the pharaoh
the terracotta army of the first emperor
aldrin’s white space suits and totems of ebony
golden trays and hadrian’s denarii
you see mary stuart’s head tumble
watch sand covering caravan routes and dead cities
you look at the stars, become a student of the universe
hang your head, turn to a tear on the cheek
of a faun
before you are many roads to mislead you
many lost moments too
behind you the first day, the first night
before you the last
dream
Trans. by Stanley H. Barkan & Adam Szyper
* * *
if you were holding a crying infant
in your arms
if you knew his name was adolf
hitler
if you knew who he would turn out to be
for the world
would you throw him into
the fire
would you throw him defenseless
into the fire?
Trans. by Stanley H. Barkan & Adam Szyper
MOTHER TERESA FROM CALCUTTA
dressed in a few-rupee sari
lay still
the body of mother
teresa
people come
the lapers
the hungry
the unwashed
they bow and say
hare krishna hare
hare
and say: ave maria
gratia plena
her crippled sons
suffering daughters
– it’s rumored
that in a dream she stood
at heaven’s gate
and saint peter said:
go back – there are no slams
here-
so she returned to her cripples
and unwanted children
she returned to her sisters —
guardians of bitter mercy
good god find for her
some celestial leprosy
find for her a few
lame angels and forgotten
saints
permit her through all
eternity
to tend your
son’s
wounds
Trans. by Stanley H. Barkan & Adam Szyper
* * *
god looks at the world sees steamboats floating over
the atlantic prussian regiments marching in the streets of królewiec
the first shining automobiles fashionable hats
dancers in miniskirts
sees waves of blood soldiers loading cannons on trains
battlefield’s mud corporal hitler thinking about the power
of powder black birds over bavaria and provençe
delirious samurai mothers birthing
killers and priests
looks at naked crowds pushed into gas chambers
where deportees are led on russian roads
where flags flutter where freud lectures
on the human ego marlene dietrich
smooths her stockings
god squints his eyes—people the world will soon forget
stand against the wall thousand of fingers squeeze the triggers
josif vissarionovich is loading his pine
the mask of untankhamen glistens in the african sun
through the tumult of announcements breaks
beethoven’s third piano concerto
scenes and faces flicker—glass iron and marble crack
steaming mercury engines labor at their
maximum rev the shadow of the eiffel tower
moves over the seine
the shadow of zappelins and messerschmitts
flow over the alps
pius xii stoops over the microphone
mother teresa from calcutta wipes a child’s tear
the bloody thrones fall
yesenin laughs—what a century what a century
charlie raises his bowler hat into the chill of the cosmos
pavane flies in upon the death of infanta
mark goes up dollars goes down ruble burns
like bullets shot from a nagan
god looks
at the world
Trans. by Stanley H. Barkan & Adam Szyper
LAMENT OF A NEW TIME
at the end of the second millennium
i look into the darkness of a new century
starting tomorrow the innocents will be born
and cain will kill abel
nothing will stop
the flow of tears and blood
the messiah will not come
time will not end
armies will march
toward the sky
missiles will embroider
the heraldy of death
some will disappear forever
others will record
words and faces
in the digital net of infinity
only jesus and buddha
will not stop looking into the emptiness
only the torch of pain
will not stop smoldering
auschwitz and the silent death
in the tundra will fade away
the words of gandhi and stalin
will sink into the pitch of time
mini-swindlers and mega-conmen
pathetic rulers and comic emperors
will fall asleep
youths will wreck the cemeteries
an old man will place the noose on his neck
and you my friend standing over my grave
aware that this poem is an echo of history
look into the abyss of the next century
and tell me
where the roads
lead
where is the destination
of man?
Trans. by Stanley H. Barkan & Adam Szyper
BLACK SILK
i stand by the side of the road
not larger than a lady bug or moth
not larger than the tear of a crow
or the pit of an apricot
not larger than a grain of flax
or eyelash of a doe
—fearfully i lift
up my head and
listen to the radiance
of the black silk
of eternity
Trans. by Stanley H. Barkan & Adam Szyper
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http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dariusz_Tomasz_Lebioda
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Dariusz Tomasz Lebioda, a poet, prose writer and literary critic.
Short Biography
DARIUSZ TOMASZ LEBIODA was born on the 23–rd of April, 1958 in Bydgoszcz. He works in university as a research worker of the Polish literature of XIX and XX–th century, but before he had worked as a lifeguard, farm–hand, tradesman and gas pressure deliverer. He trained martial arts and was a short time political prisoner. In 1994 he received Ph. D. in Polish literature at Gdansk (Danzing) University. He was travelled widely and was impressed most by Leman Lake and the Alps landscape, mountains of China and America. He felt relieved and free by the Niemen River, and he was looking at its depth in Lithuania, in Belorussia, and was thinking about verses on it by the greatest Polish poet – Adam Mickiewicz. Lebioda received a lot of Polish literary prizes: that of Andrzej Bursa’s Award, Stanisław Wyspiański’s Award, Klemens Janicki’s Award and Bruno’s Award, Hulewicz Award. His poems has been many times published and discussed in important magazines. He is the most famous poet of the New Generation – authors born between 1950 and 1960. He was published almost 50 books – from poetry, biographies, historical studies to essays and scientific monograph. His poetry has always been the topic of heated discussions. He was the intercessor of the times and spirits of his generation and he has gained fame all over the country. Very quickly he has published 25 poetic volumes and his poems can be found in all the most important Polish anthologies – including the grand anthology presenting the most beautiful and the most important Polish poems of the millennium. His works has been translated into many languages – English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese and many more. He published his poems and articles on poetry in USA, Greece, Arabic countries, Croatia, Switzerland, Lithuania and Japan. He is mostly concerned with Polish writers but he also devoted some essays and articles to Anglo and American writers – among them Faulkner, Singer, Caldwell, Malamud, Murdoch, Golding. He loves Greek poetry and wrote much about poets from this sunny country – about Kawafis, Elitis, Seferis, Theofilu and many more. He has lived in Bydgoszcz (north of Poland) which was once called little Berlin by the Prussians. His writing is the act of neverending quest of beauty, purity and fullness, and most of all it is an attempt to define a man to try to say what he is for and where he is going. Touching upon philosophy, Lebioda tries to present a man reduced to a role of a tragic witness of events – very often tragic victim of immaturity, victim of time and a naive conviction that the world is good and people are noble. He was guest in great literary event in USA, China, Kurdistan, Iraq an won Crystal of Kurdistan (2011). Lebioda is also President of new European Prize – Homer Medal of Poetry and Art.