Temat: Poezja anglojęzyczna

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) – poetka amerykańska, jedna z najbardziej dzisiaj cenionych, a zarazem kontrowersyjnych w dziejach poezji. Urodziła się w niewielkiej miejscowości Amherst w stanie Massachusetts, w rodzinie zamożnego prawnika, który wychował ją wraz z dwojgiem rodzeństwa w surowym, protestanckim duchu. Od najmłodszych lat stroniła od ludzi, nie miała przyjaciół, nigdy nie założyła rodziny, całe życie zajmowała się domem, ogrodem i pisała w samotności wiersze, o czym wiedziało tylko kilka najbliższych jej osób. W 1863 roku wysłała kilka swoich wierszy do pisma „Atlantic Monthly", jednak redakcja odmówiła ich publikacji, ponieważ zbyt daleko odbiegały treścią i stylistyką od przyjętych wówczas konwencji poetyckich. Pomimo tego redaktor i wydawca pisma Thomas Wentworth Higginson utrzymywał z Emily kontakty listowne do końca Jej życia. Tylko siedem z jej wierszy zostało opublikowanych za Jej życia, ale bez Jej wiedzy i anonimowo. Po śmierci Emily w 1886 roku Jej młodsza siostra Lavinia znalazła w zamkniętym na klucz kuferku 1775 rękopisów wierszy. Postanowiła wówczas je opublikować, w czym pomogli Thomas W. Higginson i najbliższa przyjaciółka Emily malarka Mavel Loomis Todd. Po czterech latach ukazał się tom: Emily Dickinson: Poems. Ed. by Mavel Loomis Tood and Thomas H. Higginson. Robert Brothers Pbl, Boston 1890. Jednak w obawie przed niezrozumieniem i odrzuceniem poezji Emily jako zbyt nowatorskiej, redaktorzy zdecydowali się pominąć wiele wierszy, opublikowali tylko 115 utworów, a te które opublikowali poddali własnym poprawkom stylistycznym, co fatalnie odbiło się na wartości publikacji. Dopiero po 65 latach ukazała się pełna i w miarę wierna oryginałom edycja Jej wierszy: Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. by Thomas H. Johnson.. The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, Cambridge - Masachussets 1955. Dzisiaj Emily Dickinson uważana jest za najwybitniejszą poetkę Stanów Zjednoczonych i jedną z najbardziej oryginalnych i cenionych poetek na świecie. Stanisław Barańczak - znawca i znakomity tłumacz wierszy Dickinson porównuje jej życie i losy twórczości do casusu Norwida w Polsce. Rzeczywiście, w biografii obojga niedocenianych przez lata poetów, można znaleźć wiele podobieństw, a znana fraza z wiersza Norwida: „Syn – minie pismo, lecz ty spomnisz, wnuku” idealnie pasuje zarówno do autora tych słów, jak i do amerykańskiej poetki. Szerzej o zawiłościach życia i twórczości Emili Dickinson pisze Stanisław Barańczak w eseju „Skoro nie można mieć wszystkiego”, którego lekturę gorąco polecam w temacie Zbliżenia – eseje o poezji i poetach.
Wiersze Emilly Dickinson tłumaczyli na polski m. in. Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna, Artur Międzyrzecki, Ludmiła Marjańska i Stanisław Barańczak. Drukiem ukazały się one w następujących publikacjach: Emily Dickinson: Liryki najpiękniejsze. Przekład Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna. Wyd. Algo, Toruń 2008; ...opiewam nowoczesnego człowieka. Antologia poezji amerykańskiej. Wybór i opracowanie Julia Hartwig i Artur Międzyrzecki. RePrint-ResPublica, Warszawa 1992; Emily Dickinson: I jestem różą. Wybór wierszy. Przełożyła Ludmiła Marjańska. Wydawnictwo Książkowe „Styl”, Warszawa 1999; Emily Dickinson: 100 wierszy. Wybór, przekład i wstęp Stanisław Barańczak. Wyd. Arka, Kraków 1990, Julia Hartwig: Dzikie brzoskwinie. Wyd. Sic, Warszawa 2003 (przedruk 13 przekładów St. Barańczaka), Emily Dickinson: Przeczucie. Ostatnie przekłady Ludmiły Marjańskiej. Biblioteka Telgte, Warszawa 2005. Na potrzeby własnej twórczości wokalnej wiersze Dickinson tłumaczy też Maciej Maleńczuk. Prezentowane niżej wiersze w moim przekładzie nie były wcześniej tłumaczone na język polski i w Polsce publikowane. Pochodzą one z przygotowywanego do druku tomiku: Emily Dickinson: Wiersze nieznane. Wybrał, z angielskiego przełożył i opracował Ryszard Mierzejewski. Pieszyce 2015.
        
        
Z tomu "Collected Poems Complete and Unabridged", 1991





2

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields --
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “2 [Tam jest
inne niebo...]” w temacie Ogród przedziwny

5

I have a Bird in spring
Which for myself doth sing --
The spring decoys.
And as the summer nears --
And as the Rose appears,
Robin is gone.
Yet do I not repine
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown --
Learneth beyond the sea
Melody new for me
And will return.
Fast is a safer hand
Held in a truer Land
Are mine --
And though they now depart,
Tell I my doubting heart
They’re thine.
In a serener Bright,
In a more golden light
I see
Each little doubt and fear,
Each little discord here
Removed.
Then will I not repine,
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown
Shall in a distant tree
Bright melody for me
Return.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “5 [Wiosną
mam Ptaka...]" w temacie Pierzaści bracia mniejsi

32

When Roses cease to bloom, Sir,
And Violets are done --
When Bumblebees in solemn flight
Have passed beyond the Sun --
The hand that paused to gather
Upon this Summer’s day
Will idle lie -- in Auburn --
Then take my flowers -- pray!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “32 [Gdy Róże przestają
kwitnąć...]” w temacie Wstrzymaj się chwilo, jesteś tak piękna!...

65

I can’t tell you -- but you feel it --
Nor can you tell me --
Saints, with ravished slate and pencil
Solve our April Day!
Sweeter than a vanished frolic
From a vanished green!
Swifter than the hoofs of Horsemen
Round a Ledge of dream!
Modest, let us walk among it
With our faces veiled --
As they say polite Archangels
Do in meeting God!
Not for me -- to prate about it!
Not for you -- to say
To some fashionable Lady
"Charming April Day"!
Rather -- Heaven’s "Peter Parley"!
By which Children slow
To sublimer Recitation
Are prepared to go!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “65 [Nie mogę ci powiedzieć...]” w temacie
Między sacrum a profanum (motywy religijne w poezji świeckiej)

81

We should not mind so small a flower --
Except it quiet bring
Our little garden that we lost
Back to the Lawn again.
So spicy her Carnations nod --
So drunken, reel her Bees --
So silver steal a hundred flutes
From out a hundred trees --
That whoso sees this little flower
By faith may clear behold
The Bobolinks around the throne
And Dandelions gold.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego9 pt. "81 [Nie pamiętalibyśmy
o tak małym kwiatku...]" w temacie Wiara

92

My friend must be a Bird --
Because it flies!
Mortal, my friend must be,
Because it dies!
Barbs has it, like a Bee!
Ah, curious friend!
Thou puzzlest me!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “92. [Mój przyjaciel musi być
ptakiem...]” w temacie O przyjaźni w poetyckich strofach

94

Angels, in the early morning
May be seen the Dews among,
Stooping -- plucking -- smiling -- flying --
Do the Buds to them belong?
Angels, when the sun is hottest
May be seen the sands among,
Stooping -- plucking -- sighing -- flying --
Parched the flowers they bear along.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “94. [Anioły, wczesnym rankiem...]”
w temacie Angelologia i dal..., czyli motyw anioła w poezji

122

A something in a summer’s Day
As slow her flambeaux burn away
Which solemnizes me.

A something in a summer’s noon --
A depth -- an Azure -- a perfume --
Transcending ecstasy.

And still within a summer’s night
A something so transporting bright
I clap my hands to see --

Then veil my too inspecting face
Lets such a subtle -- shimmering grace
Flutter too far for me --

The wizard fingers never rest --
The purple brook within the breast
Still chafes it narrow bed --

Still rears the East her amber Flag --
Guides still the sun along the Crag
His Caravan of Red --

So looking on -- the night -- the morn
Conclude the wonder gay --
And I meet, coming thro’ the dews
Another summer’s Day!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "122 [Coś w letnie dni...]"
w temacie Szukanie lata

128

Bring me the sunset in a cup,
Reckon the morning’s flagons up
And say how many Dew,
Tell me how far the morning leaps --
Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
Who spun the breadth of blue!
Write me how many notes there be
In the new Robin’s ecstasy
Among astonished boughs --
How many trips the Tortoise makes --
How many cups the Bee partakes,
The Debauchee of Dews!
Also, who laid the Rainbow’s piers,
Also, who leads the docile spheres
By withes of supple blue?
Whose fingers string the stalactite --
Who counts the wampum of the night
To see that none is due?
Who built this little Alban House
And shut the windows down so close
My spirit cannot see?
Who’ll let me out some gala day
With implements to fly away,
Passing Pomposity?

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “128. [Przynieś mi
zachód słońca w filiżance...]” w temacie Trudne pytania

208

The Rose did caper on her cheek --
Her Bodice rose and fell --
Her pretty speech -- like drunken men --
Did stagger pitiful --
Her fingers fumbled at her work --
Her needle would not go --
What ailed so smart a little Maid --
It puzzled me to know --
Till opposite -- I spied a cheek
That bore another Rose --
Just opposite -- Another speech
That like the Drunkard goes --
A Vest that like her Bodice, danced --
To the immortal tune --
Till those two troubled -- little Clocks
Ticked softly into one.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “208 [Róża
pląsała na jej policzku...]” w temacie Kobiecy portret

209

With thee, in the Desert --
With thee in the thirst --
With thee in the Tamarind wood --
Leopard breathes -- at last!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “209 [Z tobą,
na pustyni...]” w temacie Pożądanie, fantazje erotyczne

215

What is -- "Paradise" --
Who live there --
Are they "Farmers" --
Do they "hoe" --
Do they know that this is "Amherst" --
And that I -- am coming -- too --
Do they wear "new shoes" -- in "Eden" --
Is it always pleasant -- there --
Won’t they scold us -- when we’re homesick --
Or tell God -- how cross we are --
You are sure there’s such a person
As "a Father" -- in the sky --
So if I get lost -- there -- ever --
Or do what the Nurse calls "die" --
I shan’t walk the "Jasper" -- barefoot --
Ransomed folks -- won’t laugh at me --
Maybe -- "Eden" a’n’t so lonesome
As New England used to be!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “215 [Co to jest – Raj...]”
w temacie Raj, wyspy szczęśliwe, arkadia

249

Wild Nights -- Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile -- the Winds --
To a Heart in port --
Done with the Compass --
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden --
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor -- Tonight --
In Thee!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “249 [Dzikie
noce...]” w temacie Wiersze na różne pory dnia

310

Give little Anguish --
Lives will fret --
Give Avalanches --
And they’ll slant --
Straighten -- look cautious for their Breath --
But make no syllable -- like Death --
Who only shows the Marble Disc --
Sublimer sort -- than Speech --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “310 [Daj małą Udrękę...]”
w temacie ”Okrutną zagadką jest życie”...

339

I tend my flowers for thee --
Bright Absentee!
My Fuchsia’s Coral Seams
Rip -- while the Sower -- dreams --
Geraniums -- tint -- and spot --
Low Daisies -- dot --
My Cactus -- splits her Beard
To show her throat --
Carnations -- tip their spice --
And Bees --pick up --
A Hyacinth -- I hid --
Puts out a Ruffled Head --
And odors fall
From flasks -- so small --
You marvel how they held --
Globe Roses -- break their satin glake --
Upon my Garden floor --
Yet -- thou -- not there --
I had as lief they bore
No Crimson -- more --
Thy flower -- be gay --
Her Lord -- away!
It ill becometh me --
I’ll dwell in Calyx -- Gray --
How modestly -- alway --
Thy Daisy --
Draped for thee!

przekłąd Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “339 [Pielęgnuję
moje kwiaty dla ciebie...]” w temacie Kwiaty

386

Answer July --
Where is the Bee --
Where is the Blush --
Where is the Hay?
Ah, said July --
Where is the Seed --
Where is the Bud --
Where is the May --
Answer Thee -- Me --
Nay -- said the May --
Show me the Snow --
Show me the Bells --
Show me the Jay!
Quibbled the Jay --
Where be the Maize --
Where be the Haze --
Where be the Bur?
Here -- said the Year --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "386 [Lipcu
odpowiedz...]" w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

412

I read my sentence -- steadily --
Reviewed it with my eyes,
To see that I made no mistake
In its extremest clause --
The Date, and manner, of the shame --
And then the Pious Form
That "God have mercy" on the Soul
The Jury voted Him --
I made my soul familiar -- with her extremity --
That at the last, it should not be a novel Agony --
But she, and Death, acquainted --
Meet tranquilly, as friends --
Salute, and pass, without a Hint --
And there, the Matter ends --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “412 [Czytam
swój wyrok...]” w temacie Los i przeznaczenie

484

My Garden -- like the Beach --
Denotes there be -- a Sea --
That’s Summer --
Such as These -- the Pearls
She fetches -- such as Me

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "484 [Mój ogród - jak plaża...]"
w tematach: Ogród przedziwny i Plaża, dzika plaża...

505

I would not paint -- a picture --
I’d rather be the One
Its bright impossibility
To dwell -- delicious -- on --
And wonder how the fingers feel
Whose rare -- celestial -- stir --
Evokes so sweet a Torment --
Such sumptuous -- Despair --
I would not talk, like Cornets --
I’d rather be the One
Raised softly to the Ceilings --
And out, and easy on --
Through Villages of Ether --
Myself endued Balloon
By but a lip of Metal --
The pier to my Pontoon --
Nor would I be a Poet --
It’s finer -- own the Ear --
Enamored -- impotent -- content --
The License to revere,
A privilege so awful
What would the Dower be,
Had I the Art to stun myself
With Bolts of Melody!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "505 [Nie chciałabym
malować...]" w temacie Autoportret w lustrze wiersza

588

I cried at Pity -- not at Pain --
I heard a Woman say
"Poor Child" -- and something in her voice
Convicted me -- of me --
So long I fainted, to myself
It seemed the common way,
And Health, and Laughter, Curious things --
To look at, like a Toy --
To sometimes hear "Rich people" buy
And see the Parcel rolled --
And carried, I supposed -- to Heaven,
For children, made of Gold --
But not to touch, or wish for,
Or think of, with a sigh --
And so and so -- had been to me,
Had God willed differently.
I wish I knew that Woman’s name --
So when she comes this way,
To hold my life, and hold my ears
For fear I hear her say
She’s "sorry I am dead" -- again --
Just when the Grave and I --
Have sobbed ourselves almost to sleep,
Our only Lullaby --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "588 [Płakałam
z Litości...] w temacie Dzieciństwo

611

I see thee better -- in the Dark --
I do not need a Light --
The Love of Thee -- a Prism be --
Excelling Violet --
I see thee better for the Years
That hunch themselves between --
The Miner’s Lamp -- sufficient be --
To nullify the Mine --
And in the Grave -- I see Thee best --
Its little Panels be
Aglow -- All ruddy -- with the Light
I held so high, for Thee --
What need of Day --
To Those whose Dark -- hath so -- surpassing Sun --
It deem it be -- Continually --
At the Meridian?

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “611 [Widzę cię lepiej...]”
w temacie Gdy otworzysz oczy wydaje ci się już, że widzisz...

617

Don’t put up my Thread and Needle --
I’ll begin to Sew
When the Birds begin to whistle --
Better Stitches -- so --
These were bent -- my sight got crooked --
When my mind -- is plain
I’ll do seams -- a Queen’s endeavor
Would not blush to own --
Hems -- too fine for Lady’s tracing
To the sightless Knot --
Tucks -- of dainty interspersion --
Like a dotted Dot --
Leave my Needle in the furrow --
Where I put it down --
I can make the zigzag stitches
Straight -- when I am strong --
Till then -- dreaming I am sewing
Fetch the seam I missed --
Closer -- so I -- at my sleeping --
Still surmise I stitch --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "617 [Nie odkładaj mojej Nici i Igły...]"
w temacie Czynności i zajęcia, poza pisaniem wierszy

703

Out of sight? What of that?
See the Bird -- reach it!
Curve by Curve -- Sweep by Sweep --
Round the Steep Air --
Danger! What is that to Her?
Better ‘tis to fail -- there --
Than debate -- here --
Blue is Blue -- the World through --
Amber -- Amber -- Dew -- Dew --
Seek -- Friend -- and see --
Heaven is shy of Earth -- that’s all --
Bashful Heaven -- thy Lovers small --
Hide -- too -- from thee --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “703 [Z widzenia?...]”
w temacie Gdy otworzysz oczy wydaje ci się już, że widzisz...

710

The Sunrise runs for Both --
The East -- Her Purple Troth
Keeps with the Hill --
The Noon unwinds Her Blue
Till One Breadth cover Two --
Remotest -- still --
Nor does the Night forget
A Lamp for Each -- to set --
Wicks wide away --
The North -- Her blazing Sign
Erects in Iodine --
Till Both -- can see --
The Midnight’s Dusky Arms
Clasp Hemispheres, and Homes
And so
Upon Her Bosom -- One --
And One upon Her Hem --
Both lie --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "710[Wschód słońca trwa
dla Obojga...]" w temacie Wiersze na różne pory dnia

810

Her Grace is all she has --
And that, so least displays --
One Art to recognize, must be,
Another Art, to praise.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "810 [Jej wdzięk
jest wszystkim, co ma...]" w temacie Piękno

822

This Consciousness that is aware
Of Neighbors and the Sun
Will be the one aware of Death
And that itself alone
Is traversing the interval
Experience between
And most profound experiment
Appointed unto Men --
How adequate unto itself
Its properties shall be
Itself unto itself and none
Shall make discovery.
Adventure most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be --
Attended by a single Hound
Its own identity.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “822. To poczucie, że jest
się świadomym...]” w temacie ”Okrutną zagadką jest życie”...

927

Absent Place -- an April Day --
Daffodils a-blow
Homesick curiosity
To the Souls that snow --
Drift may block within it
Deeper than without --
Daffodil delight but
Him it duplicate --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "927 [Nieobecne
miejsce...]" w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

999

Superfluous were the Sun
When Excellence be dead
He were superfluous every Day
For every Day be said
That syllable whose Faith
Just saves it from Despair
And whose "I’ll meet You" hesitates
If Love inquire "Where"?
Upon His dateless Fame
Our Periods may lie
As Stars that drop anonymous
From an abundant sky.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “999 [Zbędne stało się Słońce...]” w temacie
Apokalipsa i eschatologia (motyw końca świata i sądu ostatecznego w poezji)

1024

So large my Will
The little that I may
Embarrasses
Like gentle infamy --
Affront to Him
For whom the Whole were small
Affront to me
Who know His Meed of all.
Earth at the best
Is but a scanty Toy --
Bought, carried Home
To Immortality.
It looks so small
We chiefly wonder then
At our Conceit
In purchasing.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “1024[Tak
wielka moja Wola...]” w temacie Trudne pytania

1116

There is another Loneliness
That many die without --
Not want of friend occasions it
Or circustances of Lot
But nature, sometimes, sometimes thought
And whoso it befall
Is richer than could be revealed
By mortal numeral --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “1116 [Jest
inna Samotność...]” w temacie Samotność

1237

My Heart ran so to thee
It would not wait for me
And I affronted grew
And drew away
For whatsoe’er my pace
He first achieve they Face
How general a Grace
Allotted two --
Not in malignity
Mentioned I this to thee --
Had he obliquity
Soonest to share
But for the Greed of him --
Boasting my Premium --
Basking in Bethleem
Ere I be there --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “1237 [Moje serce do ciebie pospieszyło...]”
w temacie Między sacrum a profanum (motywy religijne w poezji świeckiej)

1320

Dear March - Come in -
How glad I am -
I hoped for you before -
Put down your Hat -
You must have walked -
How out of Breath you are -
Dear March, how are you, and the Rest -
Did you leave Nature well -
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me -
I have so much to tell -

I got your Letter, and the Birds -
The Maples never knew that you were coming -
I declare - how Red their Faces grew -
But March, forgive me -
And all those Hills you left for me to Hue -
There was no Purple suitable -
You took it all with you -

Who knocks? That April -
Lock the Door -
I will not be pursued -
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied -
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come

That blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame -

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "1320 [Drogi Marcu,
przybywaj...]" w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

1404

March is the Month of Expectation.
The things we do not know --
The Persons of prognostication
Are coming now --
We try to show becoming firmness --
But pompous Joy
Betrays us, as his first Betrothal
Betrays a Boy.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “1404 [Marzec to miesiąc
oczekiwania...]” w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

1418

How lonesome the Wind must feel Nights --
When people have put out the Lights
And everything that has an Inn
Closes the shutter and goes in --
How pompous the Wind must feel Noons
Stepping to incorporeal Tunes
Correcting errors of the sky
And clarifying scenery
How mighty the Wind must feel Morns
Encamping on a thousand dawns
Espousing each and spurning all
Then soaring to his Temple Tall --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “1418[Jak samotny musi
się czuć Wiatr Nocą ...]” w temacie Motyw wiatru w poezji

1491

The Road to Paradise is plain,
And holds scarce one.
Not that it is not firm
But we presume
A Dimpled Road
Is more preferred.

The Belles of Paradise are few --
Not me -- nor you --
But unsuspected things --
Mines have no Wings.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “1491[Droga do Raju
jest prosta...]” w temacie Raj, wyspy szczęśliwe, arkadia

1539

Now I lay thee down to Sleep --
I pray the Lord thy Dust to keep --
And if thou live before thou wake --
I pray the Lord thy Soul to make --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “1539 [Teraz
układam cię spać...]” w temacie Modlitwa

1558

Of Death I try to think like this --
The Well in which they lay us
Is but the Likeness of the Brook
That menaced not to slay us,
But to invite by that Dismay
Which is the Zest of sweetness
To the same Flower Hesperian,
Decoying but to greet us --
I do remember when a Child
With bolder Playmates straying
To where a Brook that seemed a Sea
Withheld us by its roaring
From just the Purple Flower beyond
Until constrained to clutch it
If Doom itself were the result,
The boldest leaped, and clutched it --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “1558 [O śmierci
próbuję myśleć w ten sposób...'" w temacie Śmierć

1634

Talk not to me of Summer Trees
The foliage of the mind
A Tabernacle is for Birds
Of no corporeal kind
And winds do go that way at noon
To their Ethereal Homes
Whose Bugles call the least of us
To undepicted Realms

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "1634 [Nie mówcie do mnie Drzewa Letnie...]"
w temacie Cóż jest piękniejszego niż (wysokie) drzewa...

1640

Take all away from me, but leave me Ecstasy,
And I am richer then than all my Fellow Men --
Ill it becometh me to dwell so wealthily
When at my very Door are those possessing more,
In abject poverty --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "1640 [Weź wszystko
ode mnie...]" w temacie Między bogactwem a ubóstwem

1709

With sweetness unabated
Informed the hour had come
With no remiss of triumph
The autumn started home
Her home to be with Nature
As competition done
By influential kinsmen
Invited to return --
In supplements of Purple
An adequate repast
In heavenly reviewing
Her residue be past --

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “1709
[Z niesłabnącą słodyczą...]” w temacie Śmierć

1722

Her face was in a bed of hair,
Like flowers in a plot --
Her hand was whiter than the sperm
That feeds the sacred light.
Her tongue more tender than the tune
That totters in the leaves --
Who hears may be incredulous,
Who witnesses, believes.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “1722
[Jej twarz była w łożu włosów...]” w temacie Śmierć

1723

High from the earth I heard a bird,
He trod upon the trees
As he esteemed them trifles,
And then he spied a breeze,
And situated softly
Upon a pile of wind
Which in a perturbation
Nature had left behind.
A joyous going fellow
I gathered from his talk
Which both of benediction
And badinage partook.
Without apparent burden
I subsequently learned
He was the faithful father
Of a dependent brood.
And this untoward transport
His remedy for care.
A contrast to our respites.
How different we are!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “1723 [Wysoko z ziemi
usłyszałam ptaka...]” w temacie W harmonii z przyrodą

1739

Some say goodnight -- at night --
I say goodnight by day --
Good-bye -- the Going utter me --
Goodnight, I still reply --
For parting, that is night,
And presence, simply dawn --
Itself, the purple on the height
Denominated morn.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “1739 [Niektórzy mówią
dobranoc - w nocy...]" w temacie Pożegnania, ostatnie słowa...

1764

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
The maddest noise that grows, --
The birds, they make it in the spring,
At night’s delicious close.
Between the March and April line --
That magical frontier
Beyond which summer hesitates,
Almost too heavenly near.
It makes us think of all the dead
That sauntered with us here,
By separation’s sorcery
Made cruelly more dear.
It makes us think of what we had,
And what we now deplore.
We almost wish those siren throats
Would go and sing no more.
An ear can break a human heart
As quickly as a spear,
We wish the ear had not a heart
So dangerously near.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "1764 [Najsmutniejszy hałas,
najsłodszy hałas...]" w temacie Głosy i dźwięki, szepty i krzyki

1775

The earth has many keys,
Where melody is not
Is the unknown peninsula.
Beauty is nature’s fact.
But witness for her land,
And witness for her sea,
The cricket is her utmost
Of elegy to me.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “1775 [Ziemia ma wiele kluczy...]”
w temacie Pożegnania, ostatnie słowa...Ten post został edytowany przez Autora dnia 06.03.15 o godzinie 01:37

Temat: Poezja anglojęzyczna

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) – poetka i pisarka amerykańska. Urodziła się w Amherst w Stanie Massachusetts. Jej ojciec Natan Welby Fiske był profesorem filologii klasycznej i filozofii w Amherst College, a także ministrem. Kiedy miała piętnaście lat zmarła Jej matka, a trzy lata później – ojciec. W wieku 22 lat wyszła za mąż za Edwarda B. Hunta – kapitana armii amerykańskiej i zmieniła panieńskie nazwisko Fiske na Hunt. Ze związku tego miała dwóch synów, młodszy Murray zmarł jako dziecko w 1854 r., starszy Rennie zmarł na dyfteryt w 1865 roku, a dwa lata wcześniej zginął w wypadku na poligonie Edward B. Hunt. W 1975 r. wyszła powtórnie za mąż za Williama S. Jacksona, od którego przyjęła drugi człon swojego nazwiska. Śmierć pierwszego męża i dwóch synów miały duży wpływ na dalsze losy Jej życia, poświęcenie się działalności społecznej na rzecz równouprawnienia rdzennych Amerykanów oraz pracy pisarskiej. Najbardziej znane są Jej powieści: “Bits of Travel” (1872), “Bits about Home Matters” (1983), “Saxe Holm's Stories” (1874), “Mercy Philbrick's Choice” (1876), “Bits of Travel at Home” (1878), “Letters from a Cat” (1879), “A Century of Dishonor” (1881), “Ramona” (1884), “Ryan Thomas” (1892) i wydana już pośmiertnie “Glimpses of California” (1914). Pisała też wiersze, które wydano dopiero po Jej śmierci: “A Calendar of Sonnets” (1886), Verses” (1888) i “Poems” (1893), które posłużyły za podstawę niniejszego wyboru wiersze. Helen Hunt Jackson zmarła w 1885 roku w San Francisco, na raka żołądka. Pochowana pierwotnie przez męża w pobliżu Seven Falls na działce o powierzchni 1 akra (blisko 5 tys. m² ), spoczywa obecnie na Cmentarzu Miejskim w Colorado Spring. Pierwsze polskie przekłady wierszy Helen Hunt Jackson, mojego autorstwa, ukazały się na łamach sieciowego pisma “Libertas. Miesięcznik ludzi wolnych” w 2014 r. Były to utwory składające się na Jej tomik “Calendar of Sonnets”.
        
                   
Z tomu "Verses" (1870), 1888





My Days

Veiled priestess, in a holy place,
Day pauseth on her threshold, beckoning;
As infants to the mother's bosom spring
At sound of mother's voice, although her face
Be hid, I leap with sudden joy. No trace
Of fear I feel ; I take her hand and fling
Her arm around my neck, and walk and cling
Close to her side. She chooses road and pace;
I feast along the way on her shewbread;
I help an hour or two on her great task;
Beyond this honoring, no wage I ask.
Then. ere I know, sweet night slips in her stead,
And, while by sunset fires I rest and bask,
Warm to her faithful breast she folds my head.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Moje dni”
w temacie Wiara

Poppies on the Wheat

Ong Ancona's hills the shimmering heat,
A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow
Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow
Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat
Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet
Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro
To mark the shore.
                         The farmer does not know
That they are there. He walks with heavy feet,
Counting the bread and wine by autumn's gain,
But I -I smile to think that days remain
Perhaps to me in which, though bread be sweet
No more, and red wine warm my blood in vain,
I shall be glad remembering how the fleet,
Lithe poppies ran like torchmen with the wheat.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. " Maki
na polu pszenicznym" w temacie Kwiaty

Two Truths

„Darling”, he said, „I never meant
To hurt you;” and his eyes grew wet.
„I would not hurt you for the world!
Am I to blame if I forget?”

„Forgive my selfish tears!” she cried.
„Forgive! I knew that it was not
That you would mean to hurt me, love;
I knew it was that you forgot!”

But, all the same, deep in her heart
Rankled this thought, and rankles yet:
When love is at its best, one loves
So much that he can not forget!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego
pt. „Dwie prawdy” w temacie Miłość

A Sunrise

He slept on a bed of roses,
I know --
I, who am least of his subjects. The thing
Chanced thus.
Before it was time for the king
To rise -- just before -- I saw a red glow
Stream out of his door, such as roses show
At heart, such a glow as no fire could bring.
The solid gold of the whole eastern wing
Of the palace seemed pale.
Then, floating low
Across the threshold, great petals of pink
Fell from the feet of the king, as he stood
There, smiling, majestic, serene, and good.
But was it a bed of roses?
I think
Of another monarch who, on the brink
Of death by fire, smiled, as a monarch should.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Wschód słońca"
w temacie Wiersze na różne pory dnia

Morning-Glory

Ondrous interlacement!
Holding fast to threads by green and silky rings,
With the dawn it spreads its white and purple wings;
Generous in its bloom, and sheltering while it clings,
Sturdy morning-glory.

Creeping through the easement,
Slanting to the floor in dusty, shining beams,
Dancing on the door in quick, fantastic gleams,
Comes the new day's light, and pours in tideless streams,
Golden morning-glory.

In the lowly basement,
Rocking in the sun, the baby's cradle stands;
Now the little one thrusts out his rosy hands;
Soon his eyes will open; then in all the lands
No such morning-glory!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Poranek
w chwale” w temacie Wiersze na różne pory dnia

Solitude

“Solitude,” I said, “sweet Solitude!
I follow fast; I kneel to find thy trace;
I listen low in every secret place;
I lay rough hand on eager human lips;
I net aside all near companionships;
I know thou bast a subtler, rarer good.
O Priestess, how shalt thou be found and wooed?”

I tracked her where she passed in trackless fields;
I trod her path where footprint bad not staid
In sunless woods; I stopped to hark where laid
Her very shadow its great bound of light
And gloom in lifeless arctic day and night;
And where, to tropic sun, mid-ocean yields
Its silent, windless waves, like mirror-shields;

But found her not. Great tribes roamed free
In every trackless field and wood. More plain
Than speech I heard their voice: inrain, the rain
Of endless chatter, and in sun, the sun
Of merry lau; hi done: noi, were se never don
All silence dinned with sound; and, jostling me,
In every place, went crowds I could not see.

In anger, then, at last I cried, Betray
Whomever thou cant cheat, O Solitude,
With promise of thy subtler, rarer good!
I seek my joy henceforth in haunts of men,
Forgetting thee, where thou hast never been!
“When, lo that instant sounded close and sweet,
Above the rushing of the city street,
The voice of Solitude herself, to say,
Ha, loving comrade, met at last l Which way?”

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Samotność”
w temacie Samotność

When the Baby died

I.

When the baby died,
On every side
White lilies and blue violets were strown;
Unreasoning, the mother's heart made moan:
„Who counted all these flowers which have grown
Unhindered in their bloom?
Was there not room,
O Earth, and God, couldst thou not care
For mine a little longer? Fare
Thy way, O Earth! All life, all death
For we ceased with my baby's breath;
All Heaven I forget or doubt.
Within, without,
Is idle chance, more pitiless than law.”
And that was all the mother saw.

II.

When the baby died,
On every side
Rose strangers' voices, hard and harsh and loud.
The baby was not wrapped in any shroud.
The mother made no sound. Her head was bowed
That men's eyes might not see
Her misery;
But in her bitter heart she said,
„Ah me! 't is well that he is dead,
My boy for whom there was no food.
If there were God, and God were good,
All human hearts at least might keep
The right to weep
Their dead. There is no God, but cruel law.”
And that was all the mother saw.

III.

When the baby died,
On every side
Swift angels came in shining, singing bands,
And bore the little one, with gentle hands,
Into the sunshine of the spirit lands.
And Christ the Shepherd said,
„Let them be led
In gardens nearest to the earth.
One mother weepeth over birth,
Another weepeth over death;
In vain all Heaven answereth.
Laughs from the little ones may reach
Their ears, and teach
Them what. no blind with tears, they never saw -
That of all life, all death, God's love is law.”

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Kiedy
dziecko umarło” w temacie Śmierć

Love's Fulfilling

Love is weak
Which counts the answers and the gains,
Weighs all the losses and the pains,
And eagerly each fond word drains
A joy to seek.

When Love is strong,
It never tarries to take heed,
Or know if its return exceed
Its gift ; in its sweet haste no greed,
No strifes belong.

It hardly asks
If it be loved at all; to take
So barren seems, when it can make
Such bliss, for the beloved sake,
Of bitter tasks.

Its ecstasy
Could find hard death so beauteous,
It sees through tears how Christ loved us,
And speaks, in saying “I love thus,”
No blasphemy.

So much we miss
If love is weak, so much we gain
If love is strong, God thinks no pain
Too sharp or lasting to ordain
To teach us this.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego
pt. “Miłosne spełnienie” w temacie Miłość

Shadows of Birds

In darkened air, alone with pain,
I lay. Like links of heavy chain
The minutes sounded, measuring day,
And slipping lifelessly away.
Sudden across my silent room
A shadow darker than its gloom
Swept swift; a shadow slim and small
Which poised and darted on the wall,
And vanished quickly as it came;
A shadow, yet it lit like flame;
A shadow, yet I heard it slog,
And heard the rustle of its wing,
Till every pulse with joy was stirred;
It was the shadow of a bird!

Only the shadow! Yet it made
Full summer everywhere it strayed;
And every bird I ever knew
Back and forth in the summer flew;
And breezes wafted over me
The scent of every flower and tree;
Till I forgot the pain and gloom
And silence of my darkened room.
Now, in the glorious open air,
I watch the birds fly here and there.
And wonder, as each swift wing cleaves
The sky, if some poor soul that grieves
In lonely, darkened, silent walls
Will catch the shadow as it falls!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Cienie
ptaków” w temacie Pierzaści bracia mniejsi

Return to the Hills

Like a music of triumph and joy
Sounds the roll of the wheels,
And the breath of the engine laughs out
In loud chuckles and peals,
Like the laugh of a man that is glad
Coming homeward at night;
I lean out of the window and nod
To the left and the right,
To my friends in the fields and the woods;
Not a face do I miss;
The sweet asters and browned golden-rod,
And that stray clematis,
Of all vagabonds dearest and best,
In most seedy estate;

I am sure they ali recognize me;
If I only could wait,
I should hear all the welcome which now
In their faces I read,
„O true lover of us and our kin,
We all bid thee God speed!”

O my mountains, no wisdom can teach
Me to think that ye care
Nothing more for my steps than the rest,
Or that they can have share
Such as mine in your royal crown-lands,
Unencumbered of fee;
In your temples with altars unhewn,
Where redemption is free;
In your houses of treasure, which gold
Cannot buy if it seek;
And your oracles, mystic with words,
Which men lose if they speak!

Ah! with boldness of lovers who wed
I make haste to your feet,
And as constant as lovers who die,
My surrender repeat;
And I take as the right of my love,
And I keep as its sign,
An ineffable joy in each sense
And new strength as from wine,
A seal for all purpose and hope,
And a pledge of fall light,
Like a pillar of cloud for my day,
And of fire for my night.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego
pt. „Powrót w góry” w temacie Powroty

Love's rich and poor

Taking me hand in hand,
Love led me through his land.
His land bloomed white and red;
His palaces were fair;
Glad people everywhere
Stood smiling. Then Love said -

With all my kingdom wins,
Never my heart begins
To rest; my cruel poor
So rob my rich. By speech,
By look, they overreach,
And plunder every store.

My rich I love, and make
More rich, for giving's sake.
My poor I scorn; they choose
Their chilly beggary;
My gold is ready, free,
But they forget, refuse.

My rich I love. I weep
To see them starved, to keep
My worthless poor well fed;
To see them shiver, cold,
While wrapped with fold on told,
The beggars sleep in bed.

My rich I love, and yet
My love no law can set;
In vain I warn and cry;
They give, and give, and give;
The selfish beggars live,
And smiling see them die.

Then walking hand in hand
With Love throughout his land
Land blooming white and red -
I saw that everywhere,
Where life and love looked fair,
It was as he had said.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Miłość
jest bogata i biedna" w temacie Miłość

Light on the Mountain-Tops

In Alpine valleys, they who watch for dawn
Look never to the east; but fix their eyes
On loftier mountain-peaks of snow, which rise
To west or south.
                                 Before the happy morn
Has sent one ray of kindling red, to warn
The sleeping clouds along the eastern skies
That it is near - Bushing, in glad surprise,
These royal hills, for royal watchmen born,
Discover that God's great new day begins,
And, shedding from their sacred brows a light
Prophetic, wake the valley from its night.
Such mystic light as this a great soul wins,
Who overlooks earth's wall of griefs and sins,
And steadfast, always, gazing on the white
Great throne of God, can call aloud with deep,
Pure voice of truth, to waken them who sleep.

Bad-Gastrin, Austria, September 9, 1869

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Światło
na szczytach gór” w temacie Góry, poezja i my

Last Words

Dear hearts, whose love has been so sweet to know,
That I am looking backward as I go,
Am lingering while I haste, and in this rain
Of tears of joy am mingling tears of pain;
Do not adorn with costly shrub, or tree,
Or flower, the little grave which shelters me.
Let the wild wind-sown seeds grow up unharmed,
And back and forth all summer, unalarmed,
Let all the tiny, busy creatures creep;
Let the sweet grass its last year's tangles keep;
And when, remembering me, you come some day
And stand there, speak no praise, but only say,
„How she loved us! 'T was that which made het dear!”
Those are the words that I shall joy to hear.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Ostatnie
słowa” w temacie Pożegnania, ostatnie słowa...

Z tomu "A Calendar of Sonnets", 1886





January

O winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire,
What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn
Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn
Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire
The streams than under ice. June could not hire
Her roses to forego the strength they learn
In sleeping on thy breast. No fires can burn
The bridges thou dost lay where men desire
In vain to build.
                        O Heart, when Love's sun goes
To northward, and the sounds of singing cease,
Keep warm by inner fires, and rest in peace.
Sleep on content, as sleeps the patient rose.
Walk boldly on the white untrodden snows,
The winter is the winter's own release.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Styczeń"
w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

February

Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white;
And reigns the winter's pregnant silence still;
No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill,
And willow stems grow daily red and bright.
These are the days when ancients held a rite
Of expiation for the old year's ill,
And prayer to purify the new year's will:
Fit days, ere yet the spring rains blur the sight,
Ere yet the bounding blood grows hot with haste,
And dreaming thoughts grow heavy with a greed
The ardent summer's joy to have and taste;
Fit days, to give to last year's losses heed,
To reckon clear the new life's sterner need;
Fit days, for Feast of Expiation placed!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Luty"
w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

March

Month which the warring ancients strangely styled
The month of war,--as if in their fierce ways
Were any month of peace!--in thy rough days
I find no war in Nature, though the wild
Winds clash and clang, and broken boughs are piled
At feet of writhing trees. The violets raise
Their heads without affright, without amaze,
And sleep through all the din, as sleeps a child.
And he who watches well may well discern
Sweet expectation in each living thing.
Like pregnant mother the sweet earth doth yearn;
In secret joy makes ready for the spring;
And hidden, sacred, in her breast doth bear
Annunciation lilies for the year.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Marzec"
w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

April

No days such honored days as these! When yet
Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide
For some fair thing which should forever bide
On earth, her beauteous memory to set
In fitting frame that no age could forget,
Her name in lovely April's name did hide,
And leave it there, eternally allied
To all the fairest flowers Spring did beget.
And when fair Aphrodite passed from earth,
Her shrines forgotten and her feasts of mirth,
A holier symbol still in seal and sign,
Sweet April took, of kingdom most divine,
When Christ ascended, in the time of birth
Of spring anemones, in Palestine.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Kwiecień"
w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

May

O month when they who love must love and wed!
Were one to go to worlds where May is naught,
And seek to tell the memories he had brought
From earth of thee, what were most fitly said?
I know not if the rosy showers shed
From apple-boughs, or if the soft green wrought
In fields, or if the robin's call be fraught
The most with thy delight. Perhaps they read
Thee best who in the ancient time did say
Thou wert the sacred month unto the old:
No blossom blooms upon thy brightest day
So subtly sweet as memories which unfold
In aged hearts which in thy sunshine lie,
To sun themselves once more before they die.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Maj"
w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

June

O month whose promise and fulfilment blend,
And burst in one! it seems the earth can store
In all her roomy house no treasure more;
Of all her wealth no farthing have to spend
On fruit, when once this stintless flowering end.
And yet no tiniest flower shall fall before
It hath made ready at its hidden core
Its tithe of seed, which we may count and tend
Till harvest. Joy of blossomed love, for thee
Seems it no fairer thing can yet have birth?
No room is left for deeper ecstasy?
Watch well if seeds grow strong, to scatter free
Germs for thy future summers on the earth.
A joy which is but joy soon comes to dearth.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Czerwiec"
w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

July

Some flowers are withered and some joys have died;
The garden reeks with an East Indian scent
From beds where gillyflowers stand weak and spent;
The white heat pales the skies from side to side;
But in still lakes and rivers, cool, content,
Like starry blooms on a new firmament,
White lilies float and regally abide.
In vain the cruel skies their hot rays shed;
The lily does not feel their brazen glare.
In vain the pallid clouds refuse to share
Their dews; the lily feels no thirst, no dread.
Unharmed she lifts her queenly face and head;
She drinks of living waters and keeps fair.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Lipiec"
w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

August

Silence again. The glorious symphony
Hath need of pause and interval of peace.
Some subtle signal bids all sweet sounds cease,
Save hum of insects' aimless industry.
Pathetic summer seeks by blazonry
Of color to conceal her swift decrease.
Weak subterfuge! Each mocking day doth fleece
A blossom, and lay bare her poverty.
Poor middle-agčd summer! Vain this show!
Whole fields of golden-rod cannot offset
One meadow with a single violet;
And well the singing thrush and lily know,
Spite of all artifice which her regret
Can deck in splendid guise, their time to go!'

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Sierpień"
w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

September

O golden month! How high thy gold is heaped!
The yellow birch-leaves shine like bright coins strung
On wands; the chestnut's yellow pennons tongue
To every wind its harvest challenge. Steeped
In yellow, still lie fields where wheat was reaped;
And yellow still the corn sheaves, stacked among
The yellow gourds, which from the earth have wrung
Her utmost gold. To highest boughs have leaped
The purple grape,--last thing to ripen, late
By very reason of its precious cost.
O Heart, remember, vintages are lost
If grapes do not for freezing night-dews wait.
Think, while thou sunnest thyself in Joy's estate,
Mayhap thou canst not ripen without frost!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Wrzesień"
w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

October

The month of carnival of all the year,
When Nature lets the wild earth go its way
And spend whole seasons on a single day.
The spring-time holds her white and purple dear;
October, lavish, flaunts them far and near;
The summer charily her reds doth lay
Like jewels on her costliest array;
October, scornful, burns them on a bier.
The winter hoards his pearls of frost in sign
Of kingdom: whiter pearls than winter knew,
Or Empress wore, in Egypt's ancient line,
October, feasting 'neath her dome of blue,
Drinks at a single draught, slow filtered through
Sunshiny air, as in a tingling wine!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Październik"
w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

November

This is the treacherous month when autumn days
With summer's voice come bearing summer's gifts.
Beguiled, the pale down-trodden aster lifts
Her head and blooms again. The soft, warm haze
Makes moist once more the sere and dusty ways,
And, creeping through where dead leaves lie in drifts,
The violet returns. Snow noiseless sifts
Ere night, an icy shroud, which morning's rays
Will idly shine upon and slowly melt,
Too late to bid the violet live again.
The treachery, at last, too late, is plain;
Bare are the places where the sweet flowers dwelt.
What joy sufficient hath November felt?
What profit from the violet's day of pain?

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Listopad"
w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

December

The lakes of ice gleam bluer than the lakes
Of water 'neath the summer sunshine gleamed:
Far fairer than when placidly it streamed,
The brook its frozen architecture makes,
And under bridges white its swift way takes.
Snow comes and goes as messenger who dreamed
Might linger on the road; or one who deemed
His message hostile gently for their sakes
Who listened might reveal it by degrees.
We gird against the cold of winter wind
Our loins now with mighty bands of sleep,
In longest, darkest nights take rest and ease,
And every shortening day, as shadows creep
O'er the brief noontide, fresh surprises find.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Grudzień"
w temacie Kalendarz poetycki na cały rok

Z tomu "Sonnets and Lyrics" (1886), 1888





A Dream

I dreamed that I ws dead and crossed the heavens --
Heavens after heavens with burning feet and swift --
And cried: "O God, where art Thou?" I left one
On earth, whose burden I would pray Thee lift."

I was so dead I wondered at no thin --
Not even that the angels slowly turned
Their faces, speechless, as I hurried by
(Beneath my feet the golden pavements burned);

Nor, at the first, that I could not find God,
Because the heavens stretched endlessly like space.
At last a terror siezed my very soul;
I seemed alone in all the crowded place.

Then, sudden, one compassionate cried out,
Though like the rest his face from me he turned,
As I were one no angel might regard
(Beneath my feet the golden pavements burned):

"No moew in heaven than earth will he find God
Who does not know his loving mercy swift
But waits the moment consummate and ripe,
Each burden, from each human soul to lift."

Though I was dead, I died again for shame;
Lonely, to flee from heaven again I turned;
The ranks of angels looked away from me
(Beneath my feet the golden pavements burned).

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Sen"
w temacie Co się poetom śni...?

The Gods said Love is Blind

The gods said Love is blind. The earth was young
With foolish, youthful laughter when it heard;
It caught and spoke the letter of the words,
And from that time till now bath said and sung,
„Oh, Love is blind! The falsest face and tongue
Can cheat him, once his passion's thrill is stirred
He is so blind, poor Love I”.
                               Strange none demurred
At this, nor saw how hollow false it rang,
When all men know that sightless men can tell
Unnumbered things which vision cannot find.
Powers of the air are leagued to guide them well
And things invisible weave clew and spell
By which all labyrinths they safely wind.
Ah, we were lost, if Love had not been blind!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Bogowie
powiedzieli Miłość jest ślepa” w temacie Miłość

The Fir-Tree and the Brook

The Fir-Tree looked on stars, but loved the Brook!
„O silver-voiced! if thou wouldst wait,
My love can bravely woo.” All smiles forsook
The brook's white face. „Too late!
Too late! I go to wed the sea.
I know not if my love would curse or bless thee.
I may not, dare not, tarry to caress thee,
Oh, do not follow me!”

The Fir-Tree moaned and moaned till spring;
Then laughed in manic joy to feel
Early one day, the woodsmen of the King
Sign him with a sign of burning steel,
The first to fall. „Now flee
Thy swiftest, Brook! Thy love may curse or bless me,
I care not, if but once thou dost caress me,
O Brook, I follow thee!”

All torn and bruised with mark of adze and chain,
Hurled down the dizzy slide of sand,
Tossed by great waves in ecstasy of pain,
And rudely thrown at last to land,
The Fir-Tree heard: „Oh, see
With what fierce love it is I must caress thee!
I warned thee I might curse, and never bless thee,
Why didst thou follow me?”

All stately set with spar and brace and rope,
The Fir-Tree stood and sailed and sailed.
In wildest storm when all the ship lost hope,
The Fir-Tree never shook nor quailed,
Nor ceased from saying, „Free
Art thou, O Brook! But once thou hast caressed me;
For life, for death, thy love has cursed or blessed me;
Behold, I follow thee!"

Lost in a night, and no man left to tell,
Crushed in the giant iceberg's play,
The ship went down without a song, a knell.
Still drifts the Fir-Tree night and day,
Still moans along the sea
A voice: „O Fir-Tree! thus must I possess thee;
Eternally, brave love, will I caress thee,
Dead for the love of me!”

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Jodła
i potok” w temacie Przypowieść

Rose-Leaf

Rose-leaf on the snowy deck,
The high wind whirling it astern;
Nothing the wind could know or reek;
Why did the King's eye thither turn?

„The Queen has walked here!” hoarse he cried.
The courtiers, stunned, turned red, turned white;
No use if they had stammered,lied;
Aghast they fled his angry sight.

Kings' wives die quick, when kings go mad;
To death how fair and grave she goes
What if the king knew now, she had
Shut in her hand a little rose?

And men die quick when kings have said;
Bleeding, dishonored, flung apart
In outcast field a man lies dead
With rose-leaves warm upon his heart.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego
pt. „Płatki róży” w temacie Kwiaty

To an Absent Lover

That so much change should come when thou dost go,
Is mystery that I cannot ravel quite.
The very house seems dark as when the light
Of lamps goes out. Each wonted thing doth grow
So altered, that I wander to and fro
Bewildered by the most familiar sight,
And feel like one who rouses in the night
From dream of ecstasy, and cannot know
At first if he be sleeping or awake.
My foolish heart so foolish for thy sake
Hath grown, dear one!
                                Teach me to be more wise.
I blush for all my foolishness doth lack;
I fear to seem a coward in thine eyes.
Teach me, dear one,--but first thou must come back!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Do nieobecnego
ukochanego” w temacie Miłość

The Heart of a Rose

Rose like a hollow cup with a brim -
A brim as pink as the after-glow;
Deep down in its heart gold stamens swim,
Tremble and swim in a sea of snow.
My Love set it safe in a crystal glass,
Gently as petals float down at noon.
Low, in a whisper, my Love's voice said:
„Look quick ! In an hour it will be dead.
I picked it because it will die so soon.
Now listen, dear Heart, as the seconds pass,
What the rose will say”, my Love's voice said.

I look and I listen. The flushed pink brim
Is still as June's warmest after-glow;
Silent as stars the gold stamens swim,
Tremble and swim in their sea of snow.
I dare not breathe on the crystal glass,
Lest one sweet petal should fall too soon.
False was the whisper my Love's voice said -
If he had not picked it, it had been dead;
But now it will live an eternal noon,
And I shall hear as the seconds pass
What the rose will say till I am dead.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Serce
róży” w temacie Kwiaty

Morn

In what a strange bewilderment do we
Awake each morn from out the brief night's sleep.
Our struggling consciousness doth grope and creep
Its slow way back, as if it could not free
Itself from bonds unseen. Then Memory,
Like sudden light, outflashes from its deep
The joy or grief which it had last to keep
For us; and by the joy or grief we see
The new day dawneth like the yesterday;
We are unchanged; our life the same we knew
Before. I wonder if this is the way
We wake from death's short sleep, to struggle through
A brief bewilderment, and in dismay
Behold our life unto our old life true.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Ranek"
w temacie "Okrutną zagadką jest życie"...

Where?

MY snowy eupatorium has dropped
Its silver threads of petals in the night;
No signal told its blossoming had stopped;
Its seed-films flutter silent, ghostly white:
No answer stirs the shining air,
As I ask, "Where?"

Beneath the glossy leaves of winter-green
Dead lilly-bells lie low, and in their place
A rounded disk of pearly pink is seen,
Which tells not of the lily's fragrant grace:
No answer stirs the shining air,
As I ask, "Where?"

This morning's sunrise does not show to me
Seed-film or fruit of my sweet yesterday;
Like falling flowers, to realms I cannot see
Its moments floated silently away:
No answer stirs the shining air,
As I ask, "Where?"

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Gdzie?"
w temacie W harmonii z przyrodą

In the Dark

As one who journeys on a stormy night
Through mountain passes which he does not know
Shields like his life from savage gusts that blow
The swaying flame of his frail torch's light,
So each of us through life's long groping fight
Clings fast to one dear faith, one love, whose glow
Makes darkness noonday to our trusting sight,
And joys of perils into which we go.
God help us, when this precious shining mark
The raging storms of deep distrust assail
With icy, poisoned breath and deadly aim,
Till we, with hearts that shrink and cower and quail
In terror which no measure has nor name,
Stand trembling, helpless, palsied, in the dark.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „W ciemności”
w temacie Ciemność

A last Prayer

Father, I scarcely dare to pray,
So clear I see, now it is done,
That I have wasted half my day,
And left my work but just begun;

So clear I see that things I thought
Were right or harmless were a sin;
So clear I see that I have sought,
Unconscious, selfish aims to win;

So clear I see that I have hurt
The souls I might have helped to save;
That I have slothful been, inert,
Deaf to the calls thy leaders gave.

In outskirts of thy kingdoms vast,
Father, the humblest spot give me;
Set me the lowliest task thou host;
Let me repentant work for thee!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego
pt. „Ostatnia modlitwa” w temacie Modlitwa

The Song He never Wrote

His thoughts were song, his life was singing;
Men's hearts like harps he held and smote,
But in his heart went ever ringing,
Ringing, the song he never wrote.

Hovering, pausing, luring, fleeting,
A farther blue, a brighter mote,
The vanished sound of swift winds meeting,
The opal swept beneath the boat.

A gleam of wings forever flaming,
Never folded in nest or cote;
Secrets of joy, past name or naming;
Measures of bliss past dole or rote;

Echoes of music, always flying,
Always echo, never the note;
Pulses of life, past life, past dying -
All these in the song he never wrote.

Dead at last, and the people, weeping,
Turned from his grave with wringing hands -
„What shall we do, now he lies sleeping,
His sweet song silent in our lands?”

„Just as his voice grew clearer, stronger” -
This was the thought that keenest smote-
„O Death couldst thou not spare him longer?
Alas for the songs he never wrote I”

Free at last, and his soul up-soaring,
Planets and skies beneath his feet,
Wonder and rapture all out-pouring,
Eternity how simple, sweet!

Sorrow slain, and every regretting,
Love and Love's labors left the same,
Weariness over, suns without setting,
Motion like thought on wings of flame

Higher the singer rose and higher,
Heavens, in spaces, sank like bars;
Great joy within him glowed like fire,
He tossed his arms among the stars -

„This is the life, past life, past dying;
I am I, and I live the life
Shame on the thought of mortal crying
I Shame on its petty toil and strife!”

„Why did I halt, and weakly tremble?”
Even in heaven the memory smote -
„Fool to be dumb, and to dissemble!
Alas for the song I never wrote!”

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Pieśń, której
nigdy nie napisał” w temacie Zaśpiewam ci pieśń

Z wierszy niepublikowanych

The Angel of Pain

Angel of Pain, I think thy face
Will be, in all the heavenly place,
The sweetest face that I shall see,
The swiftest face to smile on me.
All other angels faint and tire;
Joy wearies, and forsakes desire;
Hope falters, face to face with Fate,
And dies because it cannot wait;
And Love cuts short each loving day,
Because fond hearts cannot obey
That subtlest law which measures bliss
By what it is content to miss.
But thou, O loving, faithful Pain--
Hated, reproached, rejected, slain--
Dost only closer cling and bless
In sweeter, stronger steadfastness.
Dear, patient angel, to thine own
Thou comest, and art never known
Till late, in some lone twilight place
The light of thy transfigured face
Sudden shines out, and, speechless, they
Know they have walked with Christ all day.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Anioł Bólu”
w temacie Angelologia i dal..., czyli motyw anioła w poezji

Lovers' Thoughts

“How feels the earth when, breaking from the night,
The sweet and sudden Dawn impatient spills
Her rosy colors all along the hills?
How feels the sea, as it turns sudden white,
And shines like molten silver in the light
Which pours from eastward when the full moon fills
Her time to rise?”
“I know not, love, what thrills
The earth, the sea, may feel. How should I know?
Except I guess by this - the joy I feel
When sudden on my silence or my gloom
Thy presence bursts and lights the very room?
Then on my face doth not glad color steal
Like shining waves, or hill-tops' sunrise glow?”

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Myśli
kochanków” w temacie MiłośćTen post został edytowany przez Autora dnia 27.05.15 o godzinie 06:58

Temat: Poezja anglojęzyczna

Walter "Walt" Whitman (1819-1892) – jeden z najwybitniejszych poetów drugiej połowy XIX wieku, protoplasta współczesnej poezji amerykańskiej. Urodził się na farmie w okolicy miasta South Huntington, na Long Island w stanie Nowy Jork. W 1823 r. Jego rodzina przeprowadziła się do Brooklinu - robotniczej dzielnicy Nowego Jorku. Do szkoły uczęszczał tylko przez sześć lat. Potem pracował w kancelarii adwokackiej jako chłopiec na posyłki, uczył się drukarstwa i praktykował jako zecer w różnych drukarniach. Dużo czytał, m. in. Homera, Dantego i Szekspira, był samoukiem, który dzięki swemu uporowi i wytrwałej pracy doszedł aż w 1836 r. do posady nauczyciela w wiejskiej szkole na Long Island. Był też publicystą, redaktorem i wydawcą różnych pism w Nowym Jorku, m. in.: "Daily Eagle", "The New York Democrat", "The New York Mirror" i "Brooklyn Freeman" , a w Nowym Orleanie: "The Crescent" . W 1849 r., po śmierci ojca, odziedziczył rodzinną drukarnię
i księgarnię. Mimo tak dużej aktywności zawodowej przez większą część życia pozostawał w ubóstwie. Mieszkał w maleńkim wynajętym pokoiku bez pieca. Zmarł w wieku 73 lat i pochowany na Cmentarzu Harleigh w Camden w prostym grobowcu własnego projektu. Był autorem właściwie jednej książki poetyckiej pt. „Leaves of Grass” („Źdźbła trawy”). Wydana po raz pierwszy w 1855 roku, zawierała początkowo 12 wierszy i poematów. W kolejnych 12 edycjach była poprawiana i uzupełniana, aż do przeszło 400 utworów w ostatnim wydaniu z lat 1891-92. Mimo narosłego skandalu i protestów, oskarżeniom o pornografię i wprowadzenie zakazanych obyczajowo motywów homoseksualnych, książka ta przyniosła Whitmanowi międzynarodową sławę i trwałe miejsce w historii literatury światowej,

Z tomu "The Leaves of Grass", 1891-92





One's-Self I Sing

One's-Self I Sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I
say the Form complete is worthier far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Siebie opiewam”
w temacie Być poetą...

To a Historian

You who celebrate bygones,
Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life
that has exhibited itself,
Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates,
rulers and priests,
I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself
in his own rights,
Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, (the
great pride of man in himself,)
Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,
I project the history of the future.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Do historyka”
w temacie Zaśpiewam ci pieśń

I Hear America Singing

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe
and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off
work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the
deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing
as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the
morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at
work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day- at night the party of young
fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Słyszę, jak Ameryka
śpiewa" w temacie Zaśpiewam ci pieśń

Poets to Come

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than
before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.

I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the
darkness.

I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a
casual look upon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Poeci przyjdziecie”
w temacie Oczekiwanie

* * *

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.

Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their
long hair,
Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to
the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bend-
ing arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "* * * [Dwudziestu ośmiu
młodych mężczyzn...]" w temacie Kalectwo

* * *

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are
with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate
into a new tongue.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
I show that size is only development.

Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still
pass on.

I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.
Press close bare-bosom'd night - press close magnetic nourishing
night!
Night of south winds - night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night - mad naked summer night.

Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset - earth of the mountains misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my
sake!
Far-swooping elbow'd earth - ich apple-blossom'd earth!
Smile, for your lover comes.

Prodigal, you have given me love - therefore I to you give love!
O unspeakable passionate love.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „* * * [Jestem poetą
Ciała i Duszy...]” w temacie Dlaczego piszę?

* * *

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels,
And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer’s girl boiling her iron tea-kettle and baking shortcake.

I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,
And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over,
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
And call anything close again, when I desire it.

In vain the speeding or shyness;
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach;
In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder’d bones;
In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes;
In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low;
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky;
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs;
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods;
In vain the razor-bill’d auk sails far north to Labrador;
I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "* * * [Wierzę, że źdźbło trawy
jest nie mniej ważne...]" w temacie W harmonii z przyrodą

A Woman Waits for Me

A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking.

Sex contains all, bodies, souls,
Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations,
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk,
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth,
All the governments, judges, gods, follow'd persons of the earth,
These are contain'd in sex, as parts of itself, and justifications of itself.
Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex,
Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.

Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women,
I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those women that are warm-blooded and sufficient for me,
I see that they understand me, and do not deny me,
I see that they are worthy of me, I will be the robust husband of those women.

They are not one jot less than I am,
They are tann'd in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,
Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,
They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike,
retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,
They are ultimate in their own right, they are calm, clear, well - possess'd of themselves.

I draw you close to me, you women,
I cannot let you go, I would do you good,
I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for others' sakes,
Envelop'd in you sleep greater heroes and bards,
They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.

It is I, you women, I make my way,
I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable, but I love you,
I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,
I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for These States, I press with slow rude muscle,
I brace myself effectually, I listen to no entreaties,
I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated within me.

Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,
In you I wrap a thousand onward years,
On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America,
The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls, new artists, musicians, and singers,
The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,
I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,
I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you interpenetrate now,
I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,
I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death, immortality,
I plant so lovingly now.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Kobieta czeka na mnie"
w temacie Erotyka

We Two, How Long We Were Fool'd

We two, how long we were fool'd,
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,
We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,
We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,
We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,
We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as
any,
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,
We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes
mornings and evenings,
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,
We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,
We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic
and stellar, we are as two comets,
We prowl fang'd and four-footed in the woods, we spring on
prey,
We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,
We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling
over each other and interwetting each other,
We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious,
impervious,
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and
influence of the globe,
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we
two,
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "My dwoje, jak długo
byliśmy ogłupiani" w temacie W harmonii z przyrodą

Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City

Once I pass'd through a populous city imprinting my brain for
future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,
Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met
there who detain'd me for love of me,
Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has
long been forgotten by me,
I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me,
Again we wander, we love, we separate again,
Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,
I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Pewnego razu szedłem
przez zaludnione miasto” w temacie Zauroczenie, przygoda... i co dalej?

Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone

Roots and leaves themselves alone are these,
Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and
pond-side,
Breast-sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighter
than vines,
Gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees as the
sun is risen,
Breezes of land and love set from living shores to you on the living
sea, to you O sailors!
Frost-mellow'd berries and Third-month twigs offer'd fresh to
young persons wandering out in the fields when the winter
breaks up,
Love-buds put before you and within you whoever you are,
Buds to be unfolded on the old terms,
If you bring the warmth of the sun to them they will open and
bring form, color, perfume, to you,
If you become the aliment and the wet they will become flowers,
fruits, tall branches and trees.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "* * *[Tu są tylko same
korzenie i liście...]" w temacie W harmonii z przyrodą

Sometimes with One I Love

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse
unreturn'd love,
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay is certain one
way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return'd,
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Czasami, kochając
kogoś” w temacie Bez wzajemności

That Shadow, my Likeness

That shadow, my likeness, that goes to and fro, seeking a livelihood, chattering, chaffering;
How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits;
How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;
- But in these, and among my lovers, and caroling my songs,
O I never doubt whether that is really me.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Ten cień, mój portret”
w temacie Autoportret w lustrze wiersza

Youth, Day, Old Age and Night

Youth, large, lusty, loving - youth full of grace, force, fascination,
Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace,
force, fascination?

Day full-blown and splendid - day of the immense sun, action,
ambition, laughter,
The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and
restoring darkness.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Młodość, dzień, starość i noc”
w temacie O przemijaniu...

To You

Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands,
Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners,
troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true soul and body appear before me.
They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work,
farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking,
suffering, dying.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear.
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb,
I should have made my way straight to you long ago,
I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing
but you.

I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,
None has understood you, but I understand you,
None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself,
None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you,
None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent
to subordinate you,
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,
beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure of all,
From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color'd light,
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus
of gold-color'd light,
From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it streams,
effulgently flowing forever.

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon yourself
all your life,
Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,
What you have done returns already in mockeries,
(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in
mockeries, what is their return?)

The mockeries are not you,
Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,
I pursue you where none else has pursued you,
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the
accustom'd routine, if these conceal you from others or from
yourself, they do not conceal you from me,
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these
balk others they do not balk me,
The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness, greed,
premature death, all these I part aside.

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you,
There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you,
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.

As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully
to you,
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing
the songs of the glory of you.

Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,
These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense
and interminable as they,
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent
dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain,
passion, dissolution.

The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency,
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest,
whatever you are promulges itself,
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing
is scanted,
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are
picks its way.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Do ciebie”
w temacie Być poetą...

Tears

Tears! tears! tears!
In the night, in solitude, tears,
On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the sand,
Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate,
Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head;
O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears?
What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd there on the sand?
Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries;
O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach!
O wild and dismal night storm, with wind, O belching and desperate!
O shade so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and
regulated pace,
But away at night as you fly, none looking, O then the unloosen'd ocean,
Of tears! tears! tears!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Łzy” w temacie
Łzy, płacz, rozpacz...

On the Beach at Night

On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.

Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.

Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Na plaży w nocy”
w temacie Gwiazdy, planety, kosmos w poezji...

A Hand-Mirror

Hold it up sternly - see this it sends back, (who is it? is it you?)
Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth,
No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step,
Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step,
A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh,
Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,
Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,
Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,
Words babble, hearing and touch callous,
No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;
Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,
Such a result so soon - and from such a beginning!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Lusterko”
w temacie Motyw zwieciadła, lustra i odbicia

I Sit and Look Out

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with
themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying,
neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer
of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
hid—I see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and
prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who
shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these—All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look
out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Siedzę i patrzę"
w temacie Świecie nasz

To a Common Prostitute

Be composed - be at ease with me - I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature;
Not till the sun excludes you, do I exclude you;
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.

My girl, I appoint with you an appointment - and I charge you that you make preparation to be worthy to meet me,
And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come.

Till then, I salute you with a significant look, that you do not forget me.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Do zwykłej prostytutki”
w temacie Nierząd i prostytucja

Unfolded Out of the Folds

Unfolded out of the folds of the woman man comes unfolded,
and is always to come unfolded,
Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth is to come
the superbest man of the earth,
Unfolded out of the friendliest woman is to come the friendliest
man,
Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman can a man be
form'd of perfect body,
Unfolded only out of the inimitable poems of woman can come
the poems of man, (only thence have my poems come;)
Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love, only
thence can appear the strong and arrogant man I love,
Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled woman I
love, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man,
Unfolded out of the folds of the woman's brain come all the folds
of the man's brain, duly obedient,
Unfolded out of the justice of the woman all justice is unfolded,
Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy;
A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity, but
every jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of
woman;
First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in
himself.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Rozwinięte fałdy
kobiety” w temacie Kobiecy portret

The Voice of the Rain

And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed,
and yet the same,
I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own
origin, and make pure and beautify it;
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
Reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.)

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Głos deszczu"
w temacie W czasie deszczu nudzą się dzieci, ale nie poeci

Good-Bye My Fancy!

Good-bye my Fancy!
Farewell dear mate, dear love!
I'm going away, I know not where,
Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,
So Good-bye my Fancy.

Now for my last - let me look back a moment;
The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,
Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping.

Long have we lived, joy'd, caress'd together;
Delightful! - now separation - Good - bye my Fancy.

Yet let me not be too hasty,
Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter'd, become really blended
into one;
Then if we die we die together, (yes, we'll remain one,)
If we go anywhere we'll go together to meet what happens,
May-be we'll be better off and blither, and learn something,
May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who
knows?)
May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning - so now finally,
Good-bye - and hail! my Fancy.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Do widzenia, moja Fantazjo!”
w temacie Pożegnania, ostatnie słowa...

Z tomu „The Comlete Poems”, 1975





Think of the Soul

Think of the Soul;
I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul
somehow to live in other spheres;
I do not know how, but I know it is so.

Think of loving and being loved;
I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such
things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly upon
you.

Think of the past;
I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you
and your times.

The race is never separated, nor man nor woman escapes;
All is inextricable, things, spirits, Nature, nations, you too,
precedents you come.

Recall the ever-welcome defiers, (The mothers precede them;)
Recall the sages, poets, saviors, inventors, lawgivers, of the earth;
Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons--brother of slaves,
felons, idiots, and of insane and diseas'd persons.

Think of the time when you were not yet born;
Think of times you stood at the side of the dying;
Think of the time when your own body will be dying.

Think of spiritual results,
Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
objects pass into spiritual results.

Think of manhood, and you to be a man;
Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?

Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman;
The creation is womanhood;
Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best
womanhood?

1856

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Pomyśl o duszy”
w temacie Trochę o duszy

O Sun of Real Peace

O Sun of real peace! O hastening light!
O free and extatic! O what I here, preparing, warble for!
O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his height--
and you too, O my Ideal, will surely ascend!
O so amazing and broad, up there resplendent, darting and burning!
O vision prophetic, stagger'd with weight of light! with pouring
glories!
O lips of my soul, already becoming powerless!
O ample and grand Presidentiads! Now the war, the war is over!
New history! new heroes! I project you!
Visions of poets! only you really last! sweep on! sweep on!
O heights too swift and dizzy yet!
O purged and luminous! you threaten me more than I can stand!
(I must not venture, the ground under my feet menaces me, it will not
support me:
O future too immense), O present, I return, while yet I may, to you!

1860

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "O, słońce prawdziwego
pokoju" w temacie W harmonii z przyrodą

So Far and So far and Toward the End[/b]

So far, and so far, and on toward the end,
Singing what is sung in this book, from the irresistible impulses of me;
But whether I continue beyond this book, to maturity,
Whether I shall dart forth the true rays, the ones that wait unfired,
(Did you think the sun was shining its brightest?
O - it has not yet fully risen;)
Whether I shall complete what is here started,
Whether I shall attain my own height, to justify these, yet unfinished,
Whether I shall make The Poem of The New Word,
transcending all others - depends, rich persons, upon you,
Depends, whoever you are now filling the current Presidentiad, upon you,
Upon you, Governor, Mayor, Congressman,
And you, contemporary America.

1860

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Tak daleko, daleko do końca”
w temacie Wiersze „zaangażowane

Long I Thought that Knowledge Alone

Long I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me - O if I could
but obtain knowledge!
Then my lands engrossed me - Lands of the prairies, Ohio's land, the
southern savannas, engrossed me - For them I would live - I would
be their orator;
Then I met the examples of old and new heroes -I heard of warriors,
sailors, and all dauntless persons - And it seemed to me that I
too had it in me to be as dauntless as any- and would be so;
And then, to enclose all, it came to me to strike up the songs of the
New World -And then I believed my life must be spent in
singing;
But now take notice, land of the prairies, land of the south
savannas, Ohio's land,
Take notice, you Kanuck woods - and you Lake Huron - and all that with
you roll toward Niagara - and you Niagara also,
And you, Californian mountains -That you each and all find somebody
else to be your singer of songs,
For I can be your singer of songs no longer - One who loves me is
jealous of me, and withdraws me from all but love,
With the rest I dispense - I sever from what I thought would suffice
me, for it does not - it is now empty and tasteless to me,
I heed knowledge, and the grandeur of The States, and the example of
heroes, no more,
I am indifferent to my own songs - I will go with him I love,
It is to be enough for us that we are together - We never separate
again.

1860

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Długo myślałem, że sama
wiedza” w temacie Być poetą...

Hours Continuing Long

Hours continuing long, sore and heavy-hearted,
Hours of the dusk, when I withdraw to a lonesome and unfrequented
spot, seating myself, leaning my face in my hands;
Hours sleepless, deep in the night, when I go forth, speeding swiftly
the country roads, or through the city streets, or pacing miles
and miles, stifling plaintive cries;
Hours discouraged, distracted - for the one I cannot content myself
without, soon I saw him content himself without me;
Hours when I am forgotten, (O weeks and months are passing, but I
believe I am never to forget!)
Sullen and suffering hours! (I am ashamed - but it is useless - I am
what I am);
Hours of my torment - I wonder if other men ever have the like, out of
the like feelings?
Is there even one other like me - distracted - his friend, his lover,
lost to him?
Is he too as I am now? Does he still rise in the morning, dejected,
thinking who is lost to him? and at night, awaking, think who
is lost?
Does he too harbor his friendship silent and endless? harbor his
anguish and passion?
Does some stray reminder, or the casual mention of a name, bring the
fit back upon him, taciturn and deprest?
Does he see himself reflected in me? In these hours, does he see the
face of his hours reflected?

1860

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Godziny ciągną się długo”
w temacie Smutek, melancholia, nostalgia

Solid Ironical Rolling Orb

Solid, ironical, rolling orb!
Master of all, and matter of fact! - at last I accept your terms;
Bringing to practical, vulgar tests, of all my ideal dreams,
And of me, as lover and hero.

1865

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Solidna, ironiczna,
tocząca się kulo” w temacie Los i przeznaczenie

Bathed in War's Perfume

Bathed in war's perfume--delicate flag!
(Should the days needing armies, needing fleets, come again,)
O to hear you call the sailors and the soldiers! flag like a
beautiful woman!
O to hear the tramp, tramp, of a million answering men! O the ships
they arm with joy!
O to see you leap and beckon from the tall masts of ships!
O to see you peering down on the sailors on the decks!
Flag like the eyes of women.

1865

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. „Skąpana w zapachu
wojny” w temacie Wiersze „zaangażowane”Ten post został edytowany przez Autora dnia 04.11.15 o godzinie 23:43

Temat: Poezja anglojęzyczna

Amy Lowell (1874-1925) – poetka amerykańska, jedna z czołowych przedstawicielek imagizmu – kierunku poetyckiego, rozwijającego się w Stanach Zjednoczonych i Anglii w latach 1909-1917, w którym za najważniejszy środek stylistyczny wiersza uważano wyrazistość obrazu poetyckiego. Urodziła się w Brooklinie w stanie Massachusetts
w zamożnej rodzinie arystokratycznej. Przez krótki czas uczyła się w prywatnych szkołach w Brooklinie i Bostonie, gdzie uchodziła za uczennicę wyjątkowo krnąbrną
i niezdyscyplinowaną. Właściwie była samoukiem, korzystając z potężnego księgozbioru swojego ojca i biblioteki Atheneum w Bostonie, której współzałożycielem był Jej pradziadek. Pierwszy wiersz napisała w wieku 28 lat,
kiedy zobaczyła w teatrze słynną aktorkę Eleonorę Duse. Ta skrywana początkowo fascynacja płcią żeńską, zaowocowała miłością i trzynastoletnim dozgonnym związkiem z inną znaną aktorką Adą Dwyer Russell, którą poznała w 1912 roku.
Ada D. Russell jest adresatką wielu wierszy Lowell, które uważane są za jedne
z najpiękniejszych w literaturze światowej erotyków o wciąż kontrowersyjnej i często wstydliwie skrywanej miłości lesbijskiej. Lowell debiutowała w 1912 roku tomem wierszy “A Dome of Many-Colored Glass”. Dwa lata później wydała swoją drugą książkę poetycką “Sword Blades and Poppy Seed”, która do dziś uznawana jest przez krytyków literackich za sztandarowe dzieło amerykańskiego imagizmu, zadziwiające nowatorską, niezwykle kunsztowną formą polifonicznego przekazu. Potem wydała wiele tomów wierszy. Ważniejsze z nich to: “Men, Women and Ghosth” (1916), “Can Grande's Castle” (1919), “Pictures of the Floating World” (1919), “Fire-Flower Tablets” (1921). Pośmiertnie ukazały się jeszcze trzy Jej tomy: “What's O'Clock” (1925), “East Wind” (1926) i ”Ballads for Sale” (1927), przygotowane do druku przez Adę D. Rusell. W 1926 r., została też pośmiertnie uhonorowana Nagrodą Pulitzera za całokształt twórczości poetyckiej. W Polsce Jej twórczość znana jest z kilku zaledwie wierszy, rozproszonych w internecie i niskonakładowych antologiach. Prezentowane przekłady pochodzą z przygotowywanego do druku dwujęzycznego, polsko-angielskiego, zbioru: Amy Lowell: Wiersze wybrane/Selected Poems. Wybrał,
z angielskiego przełożył i opracował Ryszard Mierzejewski.
       
      

Z tomu “A Dome of Many-Colored Glass”, 1912





Azure and Gold

April had covered the hills
With flickering yellows and reds,
The sparkle and coolness of snow
Was blown from the mountain beds.

Across a deep-sunken stream
The pink of blossoming trees,
And from windless appleblooms
The humming of many bees.

The air was of rose and gold
Arabesqued with the song of birds
Who, swinging unseen under leaves,
Made music more eager than words.

Of a sudden, aslant the road,
A brightness to dazzle and stun,
A glint of the bluest blue,
A flash from a sapphire sun.

Blue-birds so blue, 'twas a dream,
An impossible, unconceived hue,
The high sky of summer dropped down
Some rapturous ocean to woo.

Such a colour, such infinite light!
The heart of a fabulous gem,
Many-faceted, brilliant and rare.
Centre Stone of the earth's diadem!

Centre Stone of the Crown of the World,
"Sincerity" graved on your youth!
And your eyes hold the blue-bird flash,
The sapphire shaft, which is truth.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Lazur
i złoto” w temacie Nim przyjdzie wiosna...

Petals

Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.

Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry on,
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Płatki”
w temacie O przemijaniu...

Behind the Wall

I own a solace shut within my heart,
A garden full of many a quaint delight
And warm with drowsy, poppied sunshin; bright,
Flaming with lilies out of whose cups dart
Shining things
With powdered wings.

Here terrace sinks to terrace, arbors close
The ends of dreaming paths; a wanton wind
Jostles the half-ripe pears, and then, unkind,
Tumbles a-slumber in a pillar rose,
With content
Grown indolent.

By night my garden is o'erhung with gems
Fixed in an onyx setting. Fireflies
Flicker their lanterns in my dazzled eyes.
In serried rows I guess the straight, stiff stems
Of hollyhocks
Against the rocks.

So far and still it is that, listening,
I hear the flowerd talking in the dawn;
And where a sunken basin cuts the lawn,
Cinctured with iris, pale and glistening,
The sudden swish
Of a waking fish.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Za ścianą”
w temacie Noce bezsenne...

The Green Bowl

This little bowl is like a mossy pool
In a Spring wood, where dogtooth violets grow
Nodding in chequered sunshine of the trees;
A quiet place, still, with the sound of birds,
Where, though unseen, is heard the endless song
And murmur of the never resting sea.
'T was winter, Roger, when you made this cup,
But coming Spring guided your eager hand
And round the edge you fashioned young green leaves,
A proper chalice made to hold the shy
And little flowers of the woods. And here
They will forget their sad uprooting, lost
In pleasure that this circle of bright leaves
Should be their setting; once more they will dream
They hear winds wandering through lofty trees
And see the sun smiling between the leaves.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Zielona
czara” w temacie Piękno

The Road to Avignon

A Minstrel stands on a marble stair,
Blown by the bright wind, debonair;
Below lies the sea, a sapphire floor,
Above on the terrace a turret door
Frames a lady, listless and wan,
But fair for the eye to rest upon.
The minstrel plucks at his silver strings,
And looking up to the lady, sings:

Down the road to Avignon,
The long, long road to Avignon,
Across the bridge to Avignon,
One morning in the spring.

The octagon tower casts a shade
Cool and gray like a cutlass blade;
In sun-baked vines the cicalas spin,
The little green lizards run out and in.
A sail dips over the ocean's rim,
And bubbles rise to the fountain's brim.
The minstrel touches his silver strings,
And gazing up to the lady, sings:

Down the road to Avignon,
The long, long road to Avignon,
Across the bridge to Avignon,
One morning in the spring.

Slowly she walks to the balustrade,
Idly notes how the blossoms fade
In the sun's caress; then crosses where
The shadow shelters a carven chair.
Within its curve, supine she lies,
And wearily closes her tired eyes.
The minstrel beseeches his silver strings,
And holding the lady spellbound, sings:

Down the road to Avignon,
The long, long road to Avignon,
Across the bridge to Avignon,
One morning in the spring.

Clouds sail over the distant trees,
Petals are shaken down by the breeze,
They fall on the terrace tiles like snow;
The sighing of waves sounds, far below.
A humming-bird kisses the lips of a rose
Then laden with honey and love he goes.
The minstrel woos with his silver strings,
And climbing up to the lady, sings:

Down the road to Avignon,
The long, long road to Avignon,
Across the bridge to Avignon,
One morning in the spring.

Step by step, and he comes to her,
Fearful lest she suddenly stir.
Sunshine and silence, and each to each,
The lute and his singing their only speech;
He leans above her, her eyes unclose,
The humming-bird enters another rose.
The minstrel hushes his silver strings.
Hark! The beating of humming-birds' wings!

Down the road to Avignon,
The long, long road to Avignon,
Across the bridge to Avignon,
One morning in the spring.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Droga
do Awinionu” w temacie Zaśpiewam ci pieśń

Crowned

You came to me bearing bright roses,
Red like the wine of your heart;
You twisted them into a garland
To set me aside from the mart.
Red roses to crown me your lover,
And I walked aureoled and apart.

Enslaved and encircled, I bore it,
Proud token of my gift to you.
The petals waned paler, and shriveled,
And dropped; and the thorns started through.
Bitter thorns to proclaim me your lover,
A diadem woven with rue.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Koronowana”
w temacie Zauroczenie, przygoda... i co dalej?

The Promise of the Morning Star

Thou father of the children of my brain
By thee engendered in my willing heart,
How can I thank thee for this gift of art
Poured out so lavishly, and not in vain.

What thou created never more can die,
Thy fructifying power lives in me
And I conceive, knowing it is by thee,
Dear other parent of my poetry!

For I was but a shadow with a name,
Perhaps by now the very name's forgot;
So strange is Fate that it has been my lot
To learn through thee the presence of that aim,

Which evermore must guide me. All unknown,
By me unguessed, by thee not even dreamed,
A tree has blossomed in a night that seemed
Of stubborn, barren wood. For thou hast sown

This seed of beauty in a ground of truth.
Humbly I dedicate myself, and yet
I tremble with a sudden fear to set
New music ringing through my fading youth.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Obietnica
Gwiazdy Porannej” w temacie Los i przeznaczenie

March Evening

Blue through the window burns the twilight;
Heavy, through trees, blows the warm south wind.
Glistening, against the chill, gray sky light,
Wet, black branches are barred and entwined.

Sodden and spongy, the scarce-green grass plot
Dents into pools where a foot has been.
Puddles lie spilt in the road a mass, not
Of water, but steel, with its cold, hard sheen.

Faint fades the fire on the hearth, its embers
Scattering wide at a stronger gust.
Above, the old weathercock groans, but remembers
Creaking, to turn, in its centuried rust.

Dying, forlorn, in dreary sorrow,
Wrapping the mists round her withering form,
Day sinks down; and in darkness to-morrow
Travails to birth in the womb of the storm.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Wieczór
marcowy” w temacie Nim przyjdzie wiosna...

Monadnock in Early Spring

Cloud-topped and splendid, dominating all
The little lesser hills which compass thee,
Thou standest, bright with April's buoyancy,
Yet holding Winter in some shaded wall
Of stern, steep rock; and startled by the call
Of Spring, thy trees flush with expectancy
And cast a cloud of crimson, silently,
Above thy snowy crevices where fall
Pale shrivelled oak leaves, while the snow beneath
Melts at their phantom touch. Another year
Is quick with import. Such each year has been.
Unmoved thou watchest all, and all bequeath
Some jewel to thy diadem of power,
Thou pledge of greater majesty unseen.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Samotne wzgórze
wczesną wiosną” w temacie Nim przyjdzie wiosna...

To an Early Daffodil

Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring!
Thou herald of rich Summer's myriad flowers!
The climbing sun with new recovered powers
Does warm thee into being, through the ring
Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling
Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers
Of bending sky and sudden, sweeping showers,
Till ripe and blossoming thou art a thing
To make all nature glad, thou art so gay;
To fill the lonely with a joy untold;
Nodding at every gust of wind to-day,
To-morrow jewelled with raindrops. Always bold
To stand erect, full in the dazzling play
Of April's sun, for thou hast caught his gold.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Do wczesnego
żonkila” w temacie Kwiaty

Listening

'T is you that are the music, not your song.
The song is but a door which, opening wide,
Lets forth the pent-up melody inside,
Your spirit's harmony, which clear and strong
Sings but of you. Throughout your whole life long
Your songs, your thoughts, your doings, each divide
This perfect beauty; waves within a tide,
Or single notes amid a glorious throng.
The song of earth has many different chords;
Ocean has many moods and many tones
Yet always ocean. In the damp Spring woods
The painted trillium smiles, while crisp pine cones
Autumn alone can ripen. So is this
One music with a thousand cadences.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Słuchanie”
w temacie Dar suchu

Before Dawn

Life! Austere arbiter of each man's fate,
By whom he learns that Nature's steadfast laws
Are as decrees immutable; O pause
Your even forward march! Not yet too late
Teach me the needed lesson, when to wait
Inactive as a ship when no wind draws
To stretch the loosened cordage. One implores
Thy clemency, whose wilfulness innate
Has gone uncurbed and roughshod while the years
Have lengthened into decades; now distressed
He knows no rule by which to move or stay,
And teased with restlessness and desperate fears
He dares not watch in silence thy wise way
Bringing about results none could have guessed.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Przed świtem”
w temacie Los i przeznaczenie

Dreams

I do not care to talk to you although
Your speech evokes a thousand sympathies,
And all my being's silent harmonies
Wake trembling into music. When you go
It is as if some sudden, dreadful blow
Had severed all the strings with savage ease.
No, do not talk; but let us rather seize
This intimate gift of silence which we know.
Others may guess your thoughts from what you say,
As storms are guessed from clouds where darkness broods.
To me the very essence of the day
Reveals its inner purpose and its moods;
As poplars feel the rain and then straightway
Reverse their leaves and shimmer through the woods.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Marzenia”
w temacie Marzenia

Crépuscule du Matin

All night I wrestled with a memory
Which knocked insurgent at the gates of thought.
The crumbled wreck of years behind has wrought
Its disillusion; now I only cry
For peace, for power to forget the lie
Which hope too long has whispered. So I sought
The sleep which would not come, and night was fraught
With old emotions weeping silently.
I heard your voice again, and knew the things
Which you had promised proved an empty vaunt.
I felt your clinging hands while night's broad wings
Cherished our love in darkness. From the lawn
A sudden, quivering birdnote, like a taunt.
My arms held nothing but the empty dawn.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Crépuscule
du Matin” w temacie Schyłek miłości...

          
Z tomu “Sword Blades and Poppy Seed”, 1914





The Cyclists

Spread on the roadway,
With open-blown jackets,
Like black, soaring pinions,
They swoop down the hillside,m
The Cyclists.

Seeming dark-plumaged
Birds, after carrion,
Careening and circling,
Over the dying
Of England.

She lies with her bosom
Beneath them, no longer
The Dominant Mother,
The Virile - but rotting
Before time.

The smell of her, tainted,
Has bitten their nostrils.
Exultant they hover,
And shadow the sun with
Foreboding.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Cykliści”
w temacie Błędne koła rowerów...

Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window

What charm is yours, you faded old-world tapestries,
Of outworn, childish mysteries,
Vague pageants woven on a web of dream!
And we, pushing and fighting in the turbid stream
Of modern life, find solace in your tarnished broideries.

Old lichened halls, sun-shaded by huge cedar-trees,
The layered branches horizontal stretched, like Japanese
Dark-banded prints. Carven cathedrals, on a sky
Of faintest colour, where the gothic spires fly
And sway like masts, against a shifting breeze.

Worm-eaten pages, clasped in old brown vellum, shrunk
From over-handling, by some anxious monk.
Or Virgin's Hours, bright with gold and graven
With flowers, and rare birds, and all the Saints of Heaven,
And Noah's ark stuck on Ararat, when all the world had sunk.

They soothe us like a song, heard in a garden, sung
By youthful minstrels, on the moonlight flung
In cadences and falls, to ease a queen,
Widowed and childless, cowering in a screen
Of myrtles, whose life hangs with all its threads unstrung.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Słońce za oknem
spowitym pajęczyną" w temacie Blask (wysokich) okien

Storm-Racked

How should I sing when buffeting salt waves
And stung with bitter surges, in whose might
I toss, a cockleshell? The dreadful night
Marshals its undefeated dark and raves
Sent wailing down to glut the geaweed forests and their caves.
No parting cloud reveals a watery star,
My cries are washed away upon the wind,
My cramped and blistering hands can find no spar,
My eyes with hope o'erstrained, are growing blind.
But painted on the sky great visions burn,
My voice, oblation from a shattered urn!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Dręczona
przez sztorm” w temacie Ból

Patience

Be patient with you?
When the stooping sky
Leans down upon the hills
And tenderly, as one who soothing stills
An anguish, gathers earth to lie
Embraced and girdled. Do the sun-filled men
Feel patience then?

Be patient with you?
When the snow-girt earth
Cracks to let through a spurt
Of sudden green, and from the muddy dirt
A snowdrop leaps, how mark its worth
To eyes frost-hardened, and do weary men
Feel patience then?

Be patient with you?
When pain's iron bars
Their rivets tighten, stern
To bend and break their victims; as they turn,
Hopeless, there stand the purple jars
Of night to spill oblivion. Do these men
Feel patience then?

Be patient with you?
You! My sun and moon!
My basketful of flowers!
My money-bag of shining dreams! My hours,
Windless and still, of afternoon!
You are my world and I your citizen.
What meaning can have patience then?

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Cierpliwość”
w temacie Cierpliwość i tolerancja
   
A Petition

I pray to be the tool which to your hand
Long use has shaped and moulded till it be
Apt for your need, and, unconsideringly,
You take it for its service. I demand
To be forgotten in the woven strand
Which grows the multi-coloured tapestry
Of your bright life, and through its tissues lie
A hidden, strong, sustaining, grey-toned band.
I wish to dwell around your daylight dreams,
The railing to the stairway of the clouds,
To guard your steps securely up, where streams
A faery moonshine washing pale the crowds
Of pointed stars. Remember not whereby
You mount, protected, to the far-flung sky.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Prośba”
w temacie Marzenia

A Blockhead

Before me lies a mass of shapeless days,
Unseparated atoms, and I must
Sort them apart and live them. Sifted dust
Covers the formless heap. Reprieves, delays,
There are none, ever. As a monk who prays
The sliding beads asunder, so I thrust
Each tasteless particle aside, and just
Begin again the task which never stays.
And I have known a glory of great suns,
When days flashed by, pulsing with joy and fire!
Drunk bubbled wine in goblets of desire,
And felt the whipped blood laughing as it runs!
Spilt is that liquor, my too hasty hand
Threw down the cup, and did not understand.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Głuptas”
w temacie Prawda i kłamstwo

Stupidity

Dearest, forgive that with my clumsy touch
I broke and bruised your rose.
I hardly could suppose
It were a thing so fragile that my clutch
Could kill it, thus.

It stood so proudly up upon its stem,
I knew no thought of fear,
And coming very near
Fell, overbalanced, to your garment's hem,
Tearing it down.

Now, stooping, I upgather, one by one,
The crimson petals, all
Outspread about my fall.
They hold their fragrance still, a blood-red cone
Of memory.

And with my words I carve a little jar
To keep their scented dust,
Which, opening, you must
Breathe to your soul, and, breathing, know me far
More grieved than you.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Głupota”
w temacie Tęsknota

Happiness

Happiness, to some, elation;
Is, to others, mere stagnation.
Days of passive somnolence,
At its wildest, indolence.
Hours of empty quietness,
No delight, and no distress.

Happiness to me is wine,
Effervescent, superfine.
Full of tang and fiery pleasure,
Far too hot to leave me leisure
For a single thought beyond it.
Drunk! Forgetful! This the bond: it
Means to give one's soul to gain
Life's quintessence. Even pain
Pricks to livelier living, then
Wakes the nerves to laugh again,
Rapture's self is three parts sorrow.
Although we must die to-morrow,
Losing every thought but this;
Torn, triumphant, drowned in bliss.

Happiness: We rarely feel it.
I would buy it, beg it, steal it,
Pay in coins of dripping blood
For this one transcendent good.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego
pt. “Szczęście” w temacie Szczęście

The Last Quarter of the Moon

How long shall I tarnish the mirror of life,
A spatter of rust on its polished steel!
The seasons reel
Like a goaded wheel.
Half-numb, half-maddened, my days are strife.

The night is sliding towards the dawn,
And upturned hills crouch at autumn's knees.
A torn moon flees
Through the hemlock trees,
The hours have gnawed it to feed their spawn.

Pursuing and jeering the misshapen thing
A rabble of clouds flares out of the east.
Like dogs unleashed
After a beast,
They stream on the sky, an outflung string.

A desolate wind, through the unpeopled dark,
Shakes the bushes and whistles through empty nests,
And the fierce unrests
I keep as guests
Crowd my brain with corpses, pallid and stark.

Leave me in peace, O Spectres, who haunt
My labouring mind, I have fought and failed.
I have not quailed,
I was all unmailed
And naked I strove, 'tis my only vaunt.

The moon drops into the silver day
As waking out of her swoon she comes.
I hear the drums
Of millenniums
Beating the mornings I still must stay.

The years I must watch go in and out,
While I build with water, and dig in air,
And the trumpets blare
Hollow despair,
The shuddering trumpets of utter rout.

An atom tossed in a chaos made
Of yeasting worlds, which bubble and foam.
Whence have I come?
What would be home?
I hear no answer. I am afraid!

I crave to be lost like a wind-blown flame.
Pushed into nothingness by a breath,
And quench in a wreath
Of engulfing death
This fight for a God, or this devil's game.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Ostatnia kwadra
Księżyca” w temacie Okrutną zagadką jet życie...

Absence

My cup is empty to-night,
Cold and dry are its sides,
Chilled by the wind from the open window.
Empty and void, it sparkles white in the moonlight.
The room is filled with the strange scent
Of wistaria blossoms.
They sway in the moon's radiance
And tap against the wall.
But the cup of my heart is still,
And cold, and empty.

When you come, it brims
Red and trembling with blood,
Heart's blood for your drinking;
To fill your mouth with love
And the bitter-sweet taste of a soul.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Nieobecność”
w temacie W nigdzie nic..., czyli o pustce w poezji

A Gift

See! I give myself to you, Beloved!
My words are little jars
For you to take and put upon a shelf.
Their shapes are quaint and beautiful,
And they have many pleasant colours and lustres
To recommend them.
Also the scent from them fills the room
With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.

When I shall have given you the last one,
You will have the whole of me,
But I shall be dead.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Prezent”
w temacie Dary, podarunki, prezenty

The Giver of Stars

Hold your soul open for my welcoming.
Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me
With its clear and rippled coolness,
That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,
Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.

Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me,
That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire,
The life and joy of tongues of flame,
And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune,
I may rouse the blear-eyed world,
And pour into it the beauty which you have begotten.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Darczyńca
gwiazd” w temacie Modlitwa

The Blue Scarf

Pale, with the blue of high zeniths, shimmered over with silver, brocaded
In smooth, running patterns, a soft stuff, with dark knotted fringes, it lies there,
Warm from a woman's soft shoulders, and my fingers close on it, caressing.
Where is she, the woman who wore it? The scent of her lingers and drugs me!
A languor, fire-shotted, runs through me, and I crush the scarf down on my face,
And gulp in the warmth and the blueness, and my eyes swim in cool-tinted heavens.
Around me are columns of marble, and a diapered, sun-flickered pavement.
Rose-leaves blow and patter against it. Below the stone steps a lute tinkles.
A jar of green jade throws its shadow half over the floor. A big-bellied
Frog hops through the sunlight and plops in the gold-bubbled water of a basin,
Sunk in the black and white marble. The west wind has lifted a scarf
On the seat close beside me, the blue of it is a violent outrage of colour.
She draws it more closely about her, and it ripples beneath her slight stirring.
Her kisses are sharp buds of fire; and I burn back against her, a jewel
Hard and white; a stalked, flaming flower; till I break to a handful of cinders,
And open my eyes to the scarf, shining blue in the afternoon sunshine.

How loud clocks can tick when a room is empty, and one is alone!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Niebieski szalik”
w temacie Wspomnienia

Music

The neighbour sits in his window and plays the flute.
From my bed I can hear him,
And the round notes flutter and tap about the room,
And hit against each other,
Blurring to unexpected chords.
It is very beautiful,
With the little flute-notes all about me,
In the darkness.

In the daytime,
The neighbour eats bread and onions with one hand
And copies music with the other.
He is fat and has a bald head,
So I do not look at him,
But run quickly past his window.
There is always the sky to look at,
Or the water in the well!

But when night comes and he plays his flute,
I think of him as a young man,
With gold seals hanging from his watch,
And a blue coat with silver buttons.
As I lie in my bed
The flute-notes push against my ears and lips,
And I go to sleep, dreaming.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Muzyka”
w temacie Poejaz i muzyka

A Lady

You are and faded
Like an old opera tune
Played upon a harpsichord;
Or like the sun-flooded silks
Of an eighteenth-century boudoir.
In your eyes
Smoulder the fallen roses of out-lived minutes,
And the perfume of your soul
Is vague and suffusing,
With the pungence of sealed spice-jars.
Your half-tones delight me,
And I grow mad with gazing
At your blent colours.

My vigour is a new-minted penny,
Which I cast at your feet.
Gather it up from the dust,
That its sparkle may amuse you.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Dama”
w temacie Kobiecy portret

In a Garden

Gushing from the mouths of stone men
To spread at ease under the sky
In granite-lipped basins,
Where iris dabble their feet
And rustle to a passing wind,
The water fills the garden with its rushing,
In the midst of the quiet of close-clipped lawns.

Damp smell the ferns in tunnels of stone,
Where trickle and plash the fountains,
Marble fountains, yellowed with much water.

Splashing down moss-tarnished steps
It falls, the water;
And the air is throbbing with it.
With its gurgling and running.
With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur.

And I wished for night and you.
I wanted to see you in the swimming-pool,
White and shining in the silver-flecked water.
While the moon rode over the garden,
High in the arch of night,
And the scent of the lilacs was heavy with stillness.

Night, and the water, and you in your whiteness, bathing!

przeklad Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “W ogrodzie'”
w temacie Ogród przedziwny

A Tulip Garden

Guarded within the old red wall's embrace,
Marshalled like soldiers in gay company,
The tulips stand arrayed. Here infantry
Wheels out into the sunlight. What bold grace
Sets off their tunics, white with crimson lace!
Here are platoons of gold-frocked cavalry,
With scarlet sabres tossing in the eye
Of purple batteries, every gun in place.
Forward they come, with flaunting colours spread,
With torches burning, stepping out in time
To some quick, unheard march. Our ears are dead,
We cannot catch the tune. In pantomime
Parades that army. With our utmost powers
We hear the wind stream through a bed of flowers.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Ogród
tulipanów" w temacie Kwiaty
       
              

Z tomu “Men, Women, and Ghosts,”, 1916





Patterns

I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.

My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whale-bone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the splashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday sen’night.”
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.
“No,” l told him.
“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer.”
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Wzorce”
w temacie Samotność

The Painter on Silk

There was a man
Who made his living
By painting roses
Upon silk.

He sat in an upper chamber
And painted,
And the noises of the street
Meant nothing to him.

When he heard bugles, and fifes, and drums,
He thought of red, and yellow, and white roses
Bursting in the sunshine,
And smiled as he worked.

He thought only of roses,
And silk.
When he could get no more silk
He stopped painting
And only thought
Of roses.

The day the conquerors
Entered the city,
The old man
Lay dying.
He heard the bugles and drums,
And wished he could paint the roses
Bursting into sound.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Malarz
na jedwabiu” w temacie Poezja i malarstwo

The Dinner-Party

Fish

"So . . ." they said,
With their wine-glasses delicately poised,
Mocking at the thing they cannot understand.
"So . . ." they said again,
Amused and insolent.
The silver on the table glittered,
And the red wine in the glasses
Seemed the blood I had wasted
In a foolish cause.

Game

The gentleman with the grey-and-black whiskers
Sneered languidly over his quail.
Then my heart flew up and laboured,
And I burst from my own holding
And hurled myself forward.
With straight blows I beat upon him,
Furiously, with red-hot anger, I thrust against him.
But my weapon slithered over his polished surface,
And I recoiled upon myself,
Panting.

Drawing-Room

In a dress all softness and half-tones,
Indolent and half-reclined,
She lay upon a couch,
With the firelight reflected in her jewels.
But her eyes had no reflection,
They swam in a grey smoke,
The smoke of smouldering ashes,
The smoke of her cindered heart.

Coffee

They sat in a circle with their coffee-cups.
One dropped in a lump of sugar,
One stirred with a spoon.
I saw them as a circle of ghosts
Sipping blackness out of beautiful china,
And mildly protesting against my coarseness
In being alive.

Talk

They took dead men's souls
And pinned them on their breasts for ornament;
Their cuff-links and tiaras
Were gems dug from a grave;
They were ghouls battening on exhumed thoughts;
And I took a green liqueur from a servant
So that he might come near me
And give me the comfort of a living thing.

Eleven O'Clock

The front door was hard and heavy,
It shut behind me on the house of ghosts.
I flattened my feet on the pavement
To feel it solid under me;
I ran my hand along the railings
And shook them,
And pressed their pointed bars
Into my palms.
The hurt of it reassured me,
And I did it again and again
Until they were bruised.
When I woke in the the night
I laughed to find them aching,
For only living flesh can suffer.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Proszona
kolacja” w temacie Dwulicowość. Fałsz i obłuda

TOWNS IN COLOUR

I. Red Slippers

Red slippers in a shop-window, and outside in the street, flaws of grey, windy sleet!

Behind the polished glass, the slippers hang in long threads of red, festooning from the ceiling like stalactites of blood, flooding the eyes of passers-by with dripping colour, jamming their crimson reflections against the windows of cabs and tram-cars, screaming their claret and salmon into the teeth of the sleet, plopping their little round maroon lights upon the tops of umbrellas.

The row of white, sparkling shop fronts is gashed and bleeding, it bleeds red slippers. They spout under the electric light, fluid and fluctuating, a hot rain—and freeze again to red slippers, myriadly multiplied in the mirror side of the window.

They balance upon arched insteps like springing bridges of crimson lacquer; they swing up over curved heels like whirling tanagers sucked in a wind-pocket; they flatten out, heelless, like July ponds, flared and burnished by red rockets.

Snap, snap, they are cracker-sparks of scarlet in the white, monotonous block of shops.

They plunge the clangour of billions of vermilion trumpets into the crowd outside, and echo in faint rose over the pavement.

People hurry by, for these are only shoes, and in a window, farther down, is a big lotus bud of cardboard whose petals open every few minutes and reveal a wax doll, with staring bead eyes and flaxen hair, lolling awkwardly in its flower chair.

One has often seen shoes, but whoever saw a cardboard lotus bud before?

The flaws of grey, windy sleet beat on the shop-window where there are only red slippers.

II. Thompson’s Lunch Room - Grand Central Station

Study in Whites

Wax-white -
Floor, ceiling, walls.
Ivory shadows
Over the pavement
Polished to cream surfaces
By constant sweeping.
The big room is coloured like the petals
Of a great magnolia,
And has a patina
Of flower bloom
Which makes it shine dimly
Under the electric lamps.
Chairs are ranged in rows
Like sepia seeds
Waiting fulfilment.
The chalk-white spot of a cook’s cap
Moves unglossily against the vaguely bright wall -
Dull chalk-white striking the retina like a blow
Through the wavering uncertainty of steam.
Vitreous-white of glasses with green reflections,
Ice-green carboys, shifting - greener, bluer - with the jar of moving water.
Jagged green-white bowls of pressed glass
Rearing snow-peaks of chipped sugar
Above the lighthouse-shaped castors
Of grey pepper and grey-white salt.
Grey-white placards: Oyster Stew, Cornbeef Hash, Frankfurters:
Marble slabs veined with words in meandering lines.
Dropping on the white counter like horn notes
Through a web of violins,
The flat yellow lights of oranges,
The cube-red splashes of apples,
In high plated épergnes.
The electric clock jerks every half-minute:
Coming! - Past!
Three beef-steaks and a chicken-pie,
Bawled through a slide while the clock jerks heavily.
A man carries a china mug of coffee to a distant chair.
Two rice puddings and a salmon salad
Are pushed over the counter;
The unfulfilled chairs open to receive them.
A spoon falls upon the floor with the impact of metal striking stone,
And the sound throws across the room
Sharp, invisible zigzags
Of silver.

III. An Opera House

Within the gold square of the proscenium arch,
A curtain of orange velvet hangs in stiff folds,
Its tassels jarring slightly when someone crosses the stage behind.
Gold carving edges the balconies,
Rims the boxes,
Runs up and down fluted pillars.
Little knife-stabs of gold
Shine out whenever a box door is opened.
Gold clusters
Flash in soft explosions
On the blue darkness,
Suck back to a point,
And disappear.
Hoops of gold
Circle necks, wrists, fingers,
Pierce ears,
Poise on heads
And fly up above them in coloured sparkles.
Gold!
Gold!
The opera house is a treasure-box of gold.
Gold in a broad smear across the orchestra pit:
Gold of horns, trumpets, tubas;
Gold - spun-gold, twittering-gold, snapping-gold
Of harps.
The conductor raises his baton,
The brass blares out
Crass, crude,
Parvenu, fat, powerful,
Golden.
Rich as the fat, clapping hands in the boxes.
Cymbals, gigantic, coin-shaped,
Crash.
The orange curtain parts
And the prima-donna steps forward.
One note,
A drop: transparent, iridescent,
A gold bubble,
It floats... floats...
And bursts against the lips of a bank president
In the grand tier.

IV. Afternoon Rain in State Street

Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls,
Slant lines of black rain
In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings.
Below,
Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal,
The street.
And over it, umbrellas,
Black polished dots
Struck to white
An instant,
Stream in two flat lines
Slipping past each other with the smoothness of oil.
Like a four-sided wedge
The Custom House Tower
Pokes at the low, flat sky,
Pushing it farther and farther up,
Lifting it away from the house-tops,
Lifting it in one piece as though it were a sheet of tin,
With the lever of its apex.
The cross-hatchings of rain cut the Tower obliquely,
Scratching lines of black wire across it,
Mutilating its perpendicular grey surface
With the sharp precision of tools.
The city is rigid with straight lines and angles,
A chequered table of blacks and greys.
Oblong blocks of flatness
Crawl by with low-geared engines,
And pass to short upright squares
Shrinking with distance.
A steamer in the basin blows its whistle,
And the sound shoots across the rain hatchings,
A narrow, level bar of steel.
Hard cubes of lemon
Superimpose themselves upon the fronts of buildings
As the windows light up.
But the lemon cubes are edged with angles
Upon which they cannot impinge.
Up, straight, down, straight - square.
Crumpled grey-white papers
Blow along the side-walks,
Contorted, horrible,
Without curves.
A horse steps in a puddle,
And white, glaring water spurts up
In stiff, outflaring lines,
Like the rattling stems of reeds.
The city is heraldic with angles,
A sombre escutcheon of argent and sable
And countercoloured bends of rain
Hung over a four-square civilization.
When a street lamp comes out,
I gaze at it for fully thirty seconds
To rest my brain with the suffusing, round brilliance of its globe.

V. An Aquarium

Streaks of green and yellow iridescence,
Silver shiftings,
Rings veering out of rings,
Silver – gold -
Grey-green opaqueness sliding down,
With sharp white bubbles
Shooting and dancing,
Flinging quickly outward.
Nosing the bubbles,
Swallowing them,
Fish.
Blue shadows against silver-saffron water,
The light rippling over them
In steel-bright tremors.
Outspread translucent fins
Flute, fold, and relapse;
The threaded light prints through them on the pebbles
In scarcely tarnished twinklings.
Curving of spotted spines,
Slow up-shifts,
Lazy convolutions:
Then a sudden swift straightening
And darting below:
Oblique grey shadows
Athwart a pale casement.
Roped and curled,
Green man-eating eels
Slumber in undulate rhythms,
With crests laid horizontal on their backs.
Barred fish,
Striped fish,
Uneven disks of fish,
Slip, slide, whirl, turn,
And never touch.
Metallic blue fish,
With fins wide and yellow and swaying
Like Oriental fans,
Hold the sun in their bellies
And glow with light:
Blue brilliance cut by black bars.
An oblong pane of straw-coloured shimmer,
Across it, in a tangent,
A smear of rose, black, silver.
Short twists and upstartings,
Rose-black, in a setting of bubbles:
Sunshine playing between red and black flowers
On a blue and gold lawn.
Shadows and polished surfaces,
Facets of mauve and purple,
A constant modulation of values.
Shaft-shaped,
With green bead eyes;
Thick-nosed,
Heliotrope-coloured;
Swift spots of chrysolite and coral;
In the midst of green, pearl, amethyst irradiations.

Outside,
A willow-tree flickers
With little white jerks,
And long blue waves
Rise steadily beyond the outer islands.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “MIASTA W KOLORZE”
w temacie Poezjomalowanie. Poezja kolorów - kolory poezji

  
Z tomu “Pictures of the Floating World”, 1919





A Poet's Wife

You have taken our love and turned it into coins of silver.
You sell the love poems you wrote for me,
And with the price of them you buy many cups of wine.
I beg that you remain dumb,
That you write no more poems.
For the wine does us both an injury,
And the words of your heart
Have become the common speech of the Emperor's concubines.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Żona poety”
w temacie Być poetą...

The Letter

Little cramped words scrawling all over
the paper
Like draggled fly's legs,
What can you tell of the flaring moon
Through the oak leaves?
Or of my uncertain window and the
bare floor

Spattered with moonlight?
Your silly quirks and twists have nothing
in them
Of blossoming hawthorns,
And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth,
virgin of loveliness
Beneath my hand.

I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart
against
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
And I scald alone, here, under the fire
Of the great moon.

Submitted by Venus

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “List”
w temacie Listy poetyckie

Venus Transiens

Tell me,
Was Venus more beautiful
Than you are,
When she topped
The crinkled waves,
Drifting shoreward
On her plaited shell?
Was Botticelli's vision
Fairer than mine;
And were the painted rosebuds
He tossed his lady,
Of better worth
Than the words I blow about you
To cover your too great loveliness
As with a gauze
Of misted silver?

For me
You stand poised
In the blue and buoyant air,
Cinctured by bright winds,
Treading the sunlight.
And the waves which precede you
Ripple and stir
The sands at my feet.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Wenus chwili”
w temacie Wstrzymaj się chwilo, jesteś tak piękna!...

Madonna of the Evening Flowers

All day long I have been working,
Now I am tired.
I call: “Where are you?”
But there is only the oak tree rustling in the wind.
The house is very quiet,
The sun shines in on your books,
On your scissors and thimble just put down,
But you are not there.
Suddenly I am lonely:
Where are you?
I go about searching.

Then I see you,
Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,
With a basket of roses on your arm.
You are cool, like silver,
And you smile.
I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes.

You tell me that the peonies need spraying,
That the columbines have overrun all bounds,
That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.
You tell me these things.
But I look at you, heart of silver,
White heart-flame of polished silver,
Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur,
And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,
While all about us peal the loud,
sweet Te Deums of the Canterbury bells.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Madonna
kwiatów wieczorowych” w temacie Tęsknota

April

A bird chirped at my window this morning,
And over the sky is drawn a light net-work of clouds.
Come,
Let us go out into the open,
For my heart leaps like a fish that is ready to spawn.

I will lie under the beech-trees,
Under the grey branches of the beech-trees,
In a blueness of little squills and crocuses.
I will lie among the little squills
And be delivered of this overcharge of beauty,
And that which is born shall be a joy to you
Who love me.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskeigo pt. “Kwiecień”
w temacie Miłość

Snow in April

Sunshine!
Sunshine!
Smooth blue skies,
Fresh winds through early tree-tops,
Pointed shoots,
White bells,
White and purple cups.
I am a plum-tree
Checked at its flowering.
My blossoms wither,
My branches grow brittle again.
I stretch them out and up,
But the snowflakes fall
Whirl and fall.
April and snow,
And my heart stuffed and suffocating.

przekład Ryszrda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Śnieg w kwietniu”
w temacie Nim przyjdzie wiosna...

A Sprig of Rosemary

I cannot see your face.
When I think of you,
It is your hands which I see.
Your hands
Sewing,
Holding a book,
Resting for a moment on the sill of a window.
My eyes keep always the sight of your hands,
But my heart holds the sound of your voice,
And the soft brightness which is your soul.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Gałązka
Róży Marii” w temacie Bliskość

Nostalgia

"Through pleasures and palaces" -
Through hotels, and Pullman cars, and steamships . . .

Pink and white camellias
floating in a crystal bowl,
The sharp smell of firewood,
The scrape and rustle of a dog stretching himself
on a hardwood floor,
And your voice, reading - reading - to the slow ticking of an old brass clock...

"Tickets, please!"
And I watch the man in front of me
Fumbling in fourteen pockets,
While the conductor balances his ticket-punch
Between his fingers.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Nostalgia”
w temacie Smutek, melancholia, nostalgia

Impressionist Picture of a Garden

Give me sunlight, cupped in a paint brush,
And smear the red of peonies
Over my garden.
Splash blue upon it,
The hard blue of Canterbury bells,
Paling through larkspur
Into heliotrope,
To wash away among forget-me-nots
Dip red again to mix a purple,
And lay on pointed flares of lilacs against bright green.
Streak yellow for nasturtiums and marsh marigolds
And flame it up to orange for my lilies.
Now dot it so-and so-along an edge
Of Iceland poppies.
Swirl it a bit, and faintly,
That is honeysuckle.
Now put a band of brutal, bleeding crimson
And tail it off to pink, to give the roses.
And while you're loaded up with pink,
Just blotch about that bed of phlox.
Fill up with cobalt and dash in a sky
As hot and heavy as you can make it;
Then tree-green pulled up into that
Gives a fine jolt of colour.
Strain it out,
And melt your twigs into the cobalt sky.
Toss on some Chinese white to flash the clouds,
And trust the sunlight you've got in your paint.
There is the picture.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Impresjonistyczny
obraz ogrodu” w temacie Poezja i malarstwo
       
      

Z tomu “What's O'Clock”, 1926





Prime

Your voice is like bells over roofs at dawn
When a bird flies
And the sky changes to a fresher color.

Speak, speak, Beloved.
Say little things
For my ears to catch
And run with them to my heart.

Twój głos jest jak dzwony ponad dachami o świcie
Kiedy ptak leci
A niebo zmieni się świeższe koloru.

Mów, mów, Umiłowanym.
Say drobiazgi
Na moje uszy złapać
I biegać z nimi do mojego serca.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Pierwszy”
w temacie Mów do mnie...

Vespers

Last night, at sunset,
The foxgloves were like tall altar candles.
Could I have lifted you to the roof of the greenhouse, my Dear,
I should have understood their burning.

przekład Ryszarda Miezrejewskiego pt. “Nieszpory”
w temacie Miłość

Overcast Sunrise

The sky is spattered with clouds,
Pink clouds,
And behind them is the reluctant blue of dawn.
The hemlock-trees move to a weary wind,
And the clouds lose their brightness,
Gathering to a dull day.

Morning, you observe -
But the night was more shining in my thoughts.
O realistic generation,
Who do not get abroad while still the clouds are pink
And the sky concerned only with how much colour it
Will choose to wear

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Pochmurny
świt” w temacie Wiersze na różne pory dnia

Mackerel Sky

I ride, ride,
Through the spotted sunlight of an April forest
Down a pathway bewildered with crocus cups,
The wind dallies with the plume of my helmet.
I ride, ride,
Seeking those adventures to which I am dedicate,
Determined, but without alertness,
Ungraciously ignoring the salutations of the young, jocund leaves.

Lady,
Far as you are from me in distance of place,
I know you yet farther off in good will of heart.
Wherefore,
Although I make a brave show in armour of green and carnation
Riveted with the flowers which are called " you-love-me-not " of white and yellow,
And on my shield a waning moon in a field of azure,
I am gayer in my colours than in my heart.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Pierzaste niebo”
w temacie Bez wzajemności

Morning Song, with Drums

Ten pheasants cry in the dawn,
Mocking the glitter of the nearby city
Struck upon the sky.

Ivy in a wind,
Smooth grass,
Old cedar-trees.

Change is a bitter thing to contemplate
Across a grey dawn.
Puff-ball world, forsooth,
A kick and it is broken into smoke.

The pheasant's cry is raucous in the dawn.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Pieśń poranna
z werblami” w temacie Zaśpiewam ci pieśń

A Grave Song

I've a pocketful of emptiness for you, my Dear.
I've a heart like a loaf was baked yesteryear,
I've a mind like ashes spilt a week ago,
I've a hand like a rusty, cracked corkscrew
.
Can you flourish on nothing and find it good?
Can you make petrifaction do for food?
Can you warm yourself at ashes on a stone?
Can you give my hand the cunning which has gone?

If you can, I will go and lay me down
And kiss the edge of your purple gown.
I will rise and walk with the sun on my head.
Will you walk with me, will you follow the dead?

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Pieśń
poważna” w temacie Zaśpiewam ci pieśń

      
Nuit Blanche

I want no horns to rouse me up to-night,
And trumpets make too clamorous a ring
To fit my mood, it is so weary white
I have no wish for doing any thing.

A music coaxed from humming strings would please;
Not plucked, but drawn in creeping cadences
Across a sunset wall where some Marquise
Picks a pale rose amid strange silences.

Ghostly and vaporous her gown sweeps by
The twilight dusking wall, I hear her feet
Delaying on the gravel, and a sigh,
Briefly permitted, touches the air like sleet.

And it is dark, I hear her feet no more.
A red moon leers beyond the lily-tank.
A drunken moon ogling a sycamore,
Running long fingers down its shining flank.

A lurching moon, as nimble as a clown,
Cuddling the flowers and trees which burn like glass.
Red, kissing lips, I feel you on my gown -
Kiss me, red lips, and then pass - pass.

Music, you are pitiless to-night.
And I so old, so cold, so languorously white.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Biała noc”
w temacie Wiersze na różne pory dnia

Night Clouds

The white mares of the moon rush along the sky
Beating their golden hoofs upon the glass Heavens;
The white mares of the moon are all standing on their hind legs
Pawing at the green porcelain doors of the remote Heavens.
Fly, Mares,
Strain your utmost,
Scatter the milky dust of stars,
Or the tiger sun will leap upon you and destroy you
With one lick of his vermilion tongue.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. “Nocne chmury”
w temacie Chmury i obłoki w poetyckiej wyobraźniTen post został edytowany przez Autora dnia 21.05.16 o godzinie 13:13

Temat: Poezja anglojęzyczna

Elinor Wylie (1885-1928) – amerykańska poetka i powieściopisarka. Urodziła się
w Somerville w stanie New Jersey, w zamożnej arystokratycznej rodzinie. Nauki pobierała w elitarnych szkołach prywatnych. Jej życie osobiste pełne było burzliwych wydarzeń, romansów i nieudanych związków z mężczyznami. Była trzykrotnie zamężna. W 1912 r. wydała własnym sumptem mały 43-stronicowy tomik wierszy pt. “Incydental Numbers”. Ale za jej debiut uważa się powszechnie wydany dziewięć lat później zbiór wierszy pt. “Nets to Catch the Wind”. Tom ten został bardzo dobrze przyjęty zarówno przez czytelników, jak i krytyków literackich, i do dzisiaj uważany jest za jedną z najlepszych książek poetyckich XX wieku. Inne jej zbiory wierszy to: “Black Armour” (1923), „Trivial Breath” (1928 ) i wydane już pośmiertnie: „Angels and Earthly Creatures” (1929), „Birthday Sonnet” (1929), “Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie” (1932) i “Last Poems of Elinor Wylie” (1943). Oprócz poezji wydała też cztery powieści: “Jennifer Lorn. A Sedate Extravaganza” (1923), “The Venetian Glass Nephew” (1925), “The Orphan Angel” (1926; inny tytuł: “Mortal Image”, 1927)
i “Mr. Hodge & Mr. Hazard” (1928). Po wielkiej popularności w latach 20-tych
i 30-tych ubiegłego stulecia, twórczość Elinor Wylie przez wiele lat pozostawała
w cieniu, aby znów współcześnie zaistnieć na literackich salonach.
W Polsce znana jest bardzo słabo z kilku zaledwie przekładów wierszy autorstwa Ludmiły Mariańskiej, Aleksandra Ziemnego i Wiktora Jarosława Darasza, opublikowanych w niskonakładowych, niszowych wydawnictwach i internecie. Prezentowane wiersze pochodzą z przygotowywanego do druku dwujęzycznego polsko-angielskiego tomu: Elinor Wylie: Wiersze wybrane/Selected Poems. Wybrał,
z angielskiego przełożył i opracował Ryszard Mierzejewski, nakładem tłumacza.

Z tomu "Nets to Catch the Wind", 1921





Beauty

Say not of Beauty she is good,
Or aught but beautiful,
Or sleek to doves' wings of the wood
Her wild wings of a gull.

Call her not wicked; that word's touch
Consumes her like a curse;
But love her not too much, too much,
For that is even worse.

O, she is neither good nor bad,
But innocent and wild!
Enshrine her and she dies, who had
The hard heart of a child.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Piękność"
w temacie Piękno

Madman's Song

Better to see your cheek grown hollow,
Better to see your temple worn,
Than to forget to follow, follow,
After the sound of a silver horn.

Better to bind your brow with willow
And follow, follow until you die,
Than to sleep with your head on a golden pillow,
Nor lift it up when the hunt goes by.

Better to see your cheek grow sallow
And your hair grown gray, so soon, so soon,
Than to forget to hallo, hallo,
After the milk-white hounds of the moon.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Pieśń szaleńca"
w temacie W głąb siebie... ("Szaleństwo i geniusz")

Atavism

I was always afraid of Somes's Pond:
Not the little pond, by which the willow stands,
Where laughing boys catch alewives in their hands
In brown, bright shallows; but the one beyond.

There, where the frost makes all the birches burn
Yellow as cow-lilies, and the pale sky shines
Like a polished shell between black spruce and pines,
Some strange thing tracks us, turning where we turn.

You'll say I dreamed it, being the true daughter
Of those who in old times endured this dread.
Look! Where the lily-stems are showing red

A silent paddle moves below the water,
A sliding shape has stirred them like a breath;
Tall plumes surmount a painted mask of death.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Atawizm"
w temacie Lęk

Sanctuary

This is the bricklayer; hear the thud
Of his heavy load dumped down on stone.
His lustrous bricks are brighter than blood,
His smoking mortar whiter than bone.

Set each sharp-edged, fire-bitten brick
Straight by the plumb-line's shivering length;
Make my marvelous wall so thick
Dead nor living may shake its strength.

Full as a crystal cup with drink
Is my cell with dreams, and quiet, and cool. . . .
Stop, old man! You must leave a chink;
How can I breathe? You can't, you fool!

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Sanktuarium"
w temacie Dom

Bells in the Rain

Sleep falls, with limpid drops of rain,
Upon the steep cliffs of the town.
Sleep falls; men are at peace again
While the small drops fall softly down.

The bright drops ring like bells of glass
Thinned by the wind, and lightly blown;
Sleep cannot fall on peaceful grass
So softly as it falls on stone.

Peace falls unheeded on the dead
Asleep; they have had deep peace to drink;
Upon a live man's bloody head
It falls most tenderly, I think.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Dzwony w deszczu"
w temacie W czasie deszczu nudzą się dzieci, ale nie poeci

Sunset on the Spire

All that I dream
By day or night
Lives in that stream
Of lovely light.

Here is the earth,
And there is the spire;
This is my hearth,
And that is my fire.

From the sun's dome
I am shouted proof
That this is my home,
And that is my roof.

Here is my food,
And here is my drink,
And I am wooed
From the moon's brink.

And the days go over,
And the nights end;
Here is my lover,
Here is my friend.

All that I
Can ever ask
Wears that sky
Like a thin gold mask.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Zachód słońca
na szczycie" w temacie Wiersze na różne pory dnia

Escape

When foxes eat the last gold grape,
And the last white antelope is killed,
I shall stop fighting and escape
Into a little house I'll build.

But first I'll shrink to fairy size,
With a whisper no one understands,
Making blind moons of all your eyes,
And muddy roads of all your hands.

And you may grope for me in vain
In hollows under the mangrove root,
Or where, in apple-scented rain,
The silver wasp-nests hang like fruit.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Ucieczka"
w temacie Ucieczki

Sea Lullaby

The old moon is tarnished
With smoke of the flood,
The dead leaves are varnished
With colour like blood,

A treacherous smiler
With teeth white as milk,
A savage beguiler
In sheathings of silk,

The sea creeps to pillage,
She leaps on her prey;
A child of the village
Was murderd today.

She came up to meet him
In a smooth golden cloak,
She choked him and beat him
To death, for a joke.

Her bright locks were tangled,
She shouted for joy,
With one hand she strangled
A strong little boy.

Now in silence she lingers
Beside him all night
To wash her long fingers
In silvery light.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Morska
kołysanka" w temacie Kołysanki, nie tylko dla dzieci

Nancy

You are a rose, but set with sharpest spine;
You are a pretty bird that pecks at me;
You are a little squirrel on a tree,
Pelting me with the prickly fruit of the pine;

A diamond, torn from a crystal mine,
Not like that milky treasure of the sea,
A smooth, translucent pearl, but skilfully
Carven to cut, and faceted to shine.
If you are flame, it dances and burns blue;
If you are light, it pierces like a star
Intenser than a needlepoint of ice.

The dextrous touch that shaped the soul of you,
Mingled, to mix, and make you what you are,
Magic between the sugar and the spice.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Nancy"
w temacie Kobiecy portret

Z tomu "Black Armour", 1923





Full Moon

My bands of silk and miniver
Momently grew heavier;
The black gauze was beggarly thin;
The ermine muffled mouth and chin;
I could not suck the moonlight in.

Harlequin in lozenges
Of love and hate, I walked in these
Striped and ragged rigmaroles;
Along the pavement my footsoles
Trod warily on living coals.

Shouldering the thoughts I loathed,
In their corrupt disguises clothed,
Morality I could not tear
From my ribs, to leave them bare
Ivory in silver air.

There I walked, and there I raged;
The spiritual savage caged
Within my skeleton, raged afresh
To feel, behind a carnal mesh,
The clean bones crying in the flesh.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Pełnia księżyca"
w temacie W głąb siebie... ("Szaleństwo i geniusz")

Self-Portrait

A lens of crystal whose transparence calms
Queer stars to clarity, and disentangles
Fox-fires to form austere refracted angles:
A texture polished on the horny palms

Of vast equivocal creatures, beast or human:
A flint, a substance finer-grained than snow,
Graved with the Graces in intaglio
To set sarcastic sigil on the woman.

This for the mind, and for the little rest
A hollow scooped to blackness in the breast,
The simulacrum of a cloud, a feather:

Instead of stone, instead of sculptured strength,
This soul, this vanity, blown hither and thither
By trivial breath, over the whole world's length.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Autoportret"
w temacie Autoportret w lustrze wiersza

Cold-Blooded Creatures

Man, the egregious egoist
(In mystery the twig is bent)
Imagines, by some mental twist,
That he alone is sentient

Of the intolerable load
That on all living creatures lies,
Nor stoops to pity in the toad
The speechless sorrow of his eyes.

He asks no questions of the snake,
Nor plumbs the phosphorescent gloom
Where lidless fishes, broad awake,
Swim staring at a nightmare doom.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Zimnokrwista
istota" w temacie Człowiek i jego charakter

Now that your eyes are shut

Now that your eyes are shut
Not even a dusty butterfly may brush them;
My flickering knife has cut
Life from sonorous lion throats to hush them.

If pigeons croon too loud
Or lambs bleat proudly, they must come to slaughter,
And I command each cloud
To be precise in spilling silent water.

Let light forbear those lids;
I have forbidden the feathery ash to smutch them;
The spider thread that thrids
The gray-plumed grass has not my leave to touch them.

My casual ghost may slip,
Issuing tiptoe, from the pure inhuman;
The tissues of my lip
Will bruise your eyelids, while I am a woman.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Teraz kiedy twoje oczy
są już zamknięte" w temacie Pożegnania, ostatnie słowa...

Parting Gift

I cannot give you the Metropolitan Tower;
I cannot give you heaven;
Nor the nine Visigoth crowns in the Cluny Museum;
Nor happiness, even.

But I can give you a very small purse
Made out of field-mouse skin,
With a painted picture of the universe
And seven blue tears therein.

I cannot give you the Island of Capri;
I cannot give you beauty;
Nor bake you marvellous crusty cherry pies
With love and duty.

But I can give you a very little locket
Made out of wildcat hide:
Put it in your left-hand pocket
And never look inside.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Prezent
na pożegnanie" w temacie Rozstania

Z tomu "Angels and Earthly Creatures", 1929





Sonnet X. From One Person

When I perceive the sable of your hair
Silvered, and deep within those caverns are
Your eyesockets, a double-imaged star,
And your fine substance fretted down with care,

Then do I marvel that a woman dare
Prattle of mortal matters near and far
To one so wounded in demonic war
Against some prince of Sirius or Altair.

How is it possible that this hand of clay,
Though white as porcelain, can contrive a touch
So delicate it shall not hurt too much?

What voice can my invention find to say
So soft, precise, and scrupulous a word
You shall not take it for another sword?

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Sonet X.
Od jednej osoby" w temacie Sonet

Love Song

Lovers eminent in love
Ever diversities combine;
The vocal chords of the cushat-dove,
The snake's articulated spine.

Such elective elements
Educate the eye and lip
With one's refreshing innocence,
The other's claim to scholarship.

The serpent's knowledge of the world
Learn, and the dove's more naïve charm;
Whether your ringlets should be curled,
And why he likes his claret warm.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt."Piosenka
miłosna" w temacie Miłość

Little Elegy

Withouten you
No rose can grow;
No leaf be green
If never seen
Your sweetest face;
No bird have grace
Or power to sing;
Or anything
Be kind, or fair,
And you nowhere.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Mała
elegia" w temacie Elegia

Z tomu "Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie", 1933





Pretty Words

Poets make pets of pretty, docile words:
I love smooth words, like gold-enamelled fish
Which circle slowly with a silken swish,
And tender ones, like downy-feathered birds:

Words shy and dappled, deep-eyed deer in herds,
Come to my hand, and playful if I wish,
Or purring softly at a silver dish,
Blue Persian kittens fed on cream and curds.

I love bright words, words up and singing early;
Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing;
Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees;

I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly,
Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees,
Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Ładne słowa"
w temacie W zamieci słowa...

October

Beauty has a tarnished dress,
And a patchwork cloak of cloth
Dipped deep in mournfulness,
Striped like a moth.

Wet grass where it trails
Dyes it green along the hem;
She has seven silver veils
With cracked bells on them.

She is tired of all these -
Grey gauze, translucent lawn;
The broad cloak of Herakles.
Is tangled flame and fawn.

Water and light are wearing thin:
She has drawn above her head
The warm enormous lion skin
Rough red and gold.

przekład Ryszarda Mierzejewskiego pt. "Październik"
w temacie Jesień przychodzi za wcześnie...Ten post został edytowany przez Autora dnia 28.10.16 o godzinie 00:06