Language: Polish
Poet: Zuzanna Ginczanka
Translator: Alex Braslavsky
Region: Poland
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the days of final melting and final bonding
Two poems from On Centaurs and Other Poems by Zuzanna Ginczanka, translated from Polish by Alex Braslavsky
Mystery of Mystery
I am solving a rebus of twigged shadows gnarled diagonally
and through the yellow glow of sand—over a gray-humid fence dragged blindly,
—I play green with the chestnut, with the grass sprouting pale in the cobblestone cracks—
…and it’s not hard to forget when you don’t have to remember not to remember.
The mornings fly out—crowded, silver, joyous from my palms—dove-like.
Have you seen, folks, how a carefree pasqueflower-underbrush blooms,
have you seen, people, that the mysteriac in the grove is blooming with a heart?
…and I plucked it, everyone, but I won’t tell a soul—I won’t even tell you the tale.
Tajemniczkowa tajemnica
Rozwiązuję rebusy z gałązkowych wycieni powikłanych ukośnie
i przez żółty blask piachu – przez płot szaro-wilgotny przeciągniętych na oślep,
– gram w zielone z kasztanem, z kiełkującą pobladle trawką w bruków szczelinach –
…a nietrudno zapomnieć, gdy nie trzeba pamiętać, że nie wolno wspominać.
Wylatują poranki – tłumne, srebrne, radosne z moich dłoni – gołębnie.
Czy widzieliście, ludzie, jak beztroska zakwita sasankowo-poddębnie,
czy widzieliście, ludzie, że serduszkiem zakwita tajemniczek pod gajem?
…a zerwałam go, ludzie, lecz nikomu nie powiem – nawet wam nie rozbaję.
Przemiany
Dni ostatecznych przetopień i ostatecznych spojeń
były podobne innym jak konie nad wodopojem – :
miały kwitnienie brzasków
i pączkowanie gałązek
– – lecz z mieszaniny pierwiastków –
– stałam się ścisłym związkiem.
Na pozór było to samo:
świt każdy miał w nocy korzeń
(lecz w rdzeniach coś pulsowało
boleśnie, dziko i trwożnie)
na pozór było to samo:
bo każdy przejaw jest prosty
(lecz w rdzeniach coś się rozdrgało
w najdygotliwszy niedosyt)
Słowa były opaczne –
w zdaniach był dwusens słodki –
tajemny jak dwuznacznik,
dwuznaczny jak wielokropki;
mowa była zamgloną i złotodajną alaską –
a wszystko było nowiną i potępieńczą łaską.
Dziś jeszcze brzmi i grzmi
roztrzepotany grzmot:
to było: siedem dni,
a każdy był jak młot;
przetwarzał przez swój gwałt,
przeradzał, łamiąc wpół,
tłukł –
walił –
bił –
i kuł –
i nowy dawał kształt.
I jestem ścisłym związkiem w reakcji własnych przetopień,
chemicznie spojonym związkiem uczuć banalnie najszczerszych
– i mam dla ciebie słowa bezradne i płaskostope,
by siedem dni ci poświęcić jak pensjonarskie wiersze.
Transformations
The days of final melting and final bonding
were akin to horses at a watering hole—
they had blooming dawns
and budding twigs—
— —but from a mixture of elements
— I became a close union.
On the surface it was the same:
each dawn took root at night
(but at their cores something pulsed
painfully, wildly and fearfully)
On the surface it was the same:
for every symptom is simple
(but at their cores something shook
into the most urgent lack)
The words were drab—
in the sentences there was a two-sense sweetness—
mysterious as ambiguity,
as ambiguous as ellipses;
speech was a misty and gold-bearing alaska—
and all was news and condemning grace.
Today it still sounds and thunders
A fluttering thunder:
it was: seven days,
and each was like a hammer;
it processed through its violence,
it was breaking through, breaking in half,
smashing—
pounded—
beaten—
and stabbed—
giving new shape.
And I am a tight bond in the reaction of my own re-melting,
a chemically bonded union of the most banally sincere feelings
—and I have words for you that are helpless and flat-footed,
to devote seven days to you like in the poems of a boarding schoolgirl.
Zuzanna Ginczanka (1917-1945) was a Polish-Ukrainian-Jewish poet of the interwar period. Born in Kiev, which her parents fled to avoid the Russian Civil War in 1922, Ginczanka began writing seriously as a child in Równe, Poland (now Rivne, Ukraine). She was nationally recognized for her poetry by sixteen years of age. Encouraged by a correspondence with poet Julian Tuwim, she moved to Warsaw in 1935. There she became associated with the Skamander group and the satirical magazine Szpilki, and befriended many writers including Witold Gombrowicz. Her 1936 collection, On Centaurs, was widely lauded upon its release. At the start of World War II, she moved east, living in Równe and Soviet-occupied Lviv. In 1942, after the German takeover of Ukraine, she escaped arrest and fled to Kraków on false papers to join her husband. She was arrested in 1944 and shot by the Gestapo a few days before Kraków was liberated by the Soviets. After the war, her last known poem “Non omnis moriar…” was used in court to testify against her denouncers.
Alex Braslavsky is a scholar, translator, and poet. A graduate student in the Harvard Slavic Department, she writes scholarship on Russian, Polish, and Czech poetry through a comparative poetics lens. She was an American Literary Translators’ Association Mentee in 2021. Her work on Polish literature has been supported by the Jurzykowski Polish Grant and the ©POLAND Translation Program. Her poetry has appeared in Conjunctions and Colorado Review, among others.
These poems are excerpted from On Centaurs and Other Poems (World Poetry Books, 2023).
