THREE POEMS
Bierezin, Jacek
Jacek Bierezin (born 1947 in Lodz) is a young Polish poet belonging to the generation that, in the course of the 1960s, became increasingly disillusioned with official propaganda and whose poetry...
...His first collection, Lekcja liryki (A Poetry Lesson) appeared in 1972...
...It, is from this book, published last year by the Polish emigre Instytut Literacki in Paris, that the poems below have been taken...
...Once you're free of it, you may depart to the land of clocks and social harmony...
...Room-temperature is ideal...
...The clarity of syllogism against the night powers of metaphor, dark and terrifying, creating strife and uncertainty, inspiring chaos and fear...
...Translated by ANDRZEJ BUSZA and BOGDAN CZERNIAWSKI...
...Also from the heat...
...The thing An immaterial thing should be treated with great care...
...Protect it from the damp and cold...
...The Plato of my time is not a philosopher...
...Elegy Ash of the poem beautiful and helpless restore life to orphaned times bless the steps of those scaling mountains and heal the wound of air after the falling to the triumphant give olive branches out of darkness draw goodness and awaken conscience send heroes to the army that is losing or disarm those standing in closed ranks ash of the poem beautiful and powerless for those in exile carry mountains across the sea turn back the winds and lift the eyelids of the waiting and let them see white sails on the horizon cherish men but do not choose nations chosen nations breed prophets dreaming of empire take faith from the dying and give it to those who remain dispel the lie of myths and make the soul mortal ash of the poem beautiful and defenseless give hope to those who do not know and let those who want to depart with full knowledge and an eye unmovably clear Plato I do not hold it against him that he wanted to banish me from the Republic...
...I know that he sacrificed me on the altar of the forces of life and light...
...Use a peacock plume or toothbrush...
...his second, Warn (To You), had been accepted by the publishing house but was banned by the censor before it could go into print...
...Moreover, it existed only on parchment...
...I knqw that I was only a shadow, standing between him and the essence of things, which he tried to reach so as to gain certain knowledge...
...On holy days do not display conspicuously in the room...
...Jacek Bierezin (born 1947 in Lodz) is a young Polish poet belonging to the generation that, in the course of the 1960s, became increasingly disillusioned with official propaganda and whose poetry is full of irony and sarcasm...
...His one-dimensional state, the brain-child of a ponderous imagination, was not the worst of tyrannies...
...It may get frightened and fly away...
...Polish daily...
Vol. 22 • September 1975 • No. 4
