The World Shared - Dariusz Sośnicki

Today's book of poetry:  The World Shared.  Dariusz Sosnicki.  Translated by Piotr Florczyk and Boris Dralyuk.  BOA Editions, Ltd.  Rochester, New York, USA.  2014.

Reading Dariusz Sosnicki is a bit like Vladimir Mayakovsky running into Wislawa Szymborska on a train, they sit down with the patient Raymond Carver and start to hack out poems.  Sosnicki's thoroughly modern voice rumbles across these pages with an echo of old Europe singing background serenades.

These melancholy poems read a little like fables, a little like common knowledge.

There is always something lost in translation, although I'm certain Florczyk and Dralyuk did an excellent job.  I only know a few words in Polish and can't read the original.  The loss I refer to is that unbridgeable gap in the imaginations of cultures.  Even when speaking the same language idiom can be so subtle, ethereal, as to render a meaning translation almost impossible.  When I lived in Eastern Europe I was constantly befuddled by phrases like "drunk as a rainbow", but instantly saw the poetry in the language.  Piotr Florczyk and Boris Dralyuk have assuredly found Sosnicki's real voice for us.

Alphabet of Mr. P.: Shopping Bag

The drawer will finally break. There are too many of these bags,

plastic shopping bags, promotional tote bags that promote nothing.

Why collect them all—one cat, and small at that,

who uses the litter box four times a day,

and one trash can won't justify this mania.

He barely opens the drawer and they come mushrooming out.

Fungus in time-lapse footage.

Just watch, and the first puffball will burst

and pieces of foil will cover the kitchen

like a certain village past Kutno, with a pile of garbage

towering to the west of it: The wind tears from it the airiest pieces

and carries them east over the fields. Beware, Warsaw,

your drawer is already bursting at the seams.

This transparency, however, is a bit uncomfortable:

obviously, bread, cheeses, mineral water, Gazeta Wyborcza,

but alcohol is already creating problems. Especially a small bottle

of Gorzka Zoladkowa, heralding an intimate adventure

in front of the TV rather than a grand party

or a romantic dinner for two, with lit candles,

which, for the life of me, I can't see in the bag. Loneliness is blacklisted

and attracts predators that hunt in packs. Beware, you lonely ones.

Children grab for a bag as chicks grab for their mother's beak,

asking what's in it for them. They get a Snickers bar and jellies,

so as to disappear into the depths of the children's room.

From the standpoint of human civilization this scene isn't too

     comforting,

but the invention of sweets certainly deserves praise.

And it's good to see, out of the corner of one's eye, that the bags are full,

thinks Mr. P., bent over the atlas. To hear how heavily it falls onto the

     kitchen table—

that nothing on which, as usual, you spent fifty zlotys.

...

From the introduction by Florczyk and Dralyuk:

     "Since the 1990s Dariusz Sosnicki has come to be recognized as a singular 

     voice in Polish poetry, bracingly fresh and yet refreshingly unaffected by

     the latest literary trends. This present collection, culled from the past two

     decades of Sosnicki's poetic activity, is a rich, sustained meditation on our

     shared world, which can feel at once lonely and crowded, small and boundless,

     immutable and forever changing."

Mr. and Mrs. P. and Anti-Wanda

Why do Polish girls take off their shoes on the train

and put their feet up on the seat in front of them? Why do they squeeze

     them in

between the knees of that boy in shorts, a none too nice Hungarian or

     German,

to whom they are bound by body chemistry and a few dozen English

     words?

Why don't they respond to our Polish "good morning,"

when we enter the compartment, and then, a moment later,

when the train crosses the border, quickly hand their passports with the

     eagle

on the cover to the customs officer, and stubbornly watch for something

     outside our window?

We did not take the teacher's version of the Hippocratic Oath,

but we're always ready to come to our relative's aid:

Large breasts aren't aren't everything.

We've paid dearly for our disastrous geopolitical situation,

but Gombrowicz and Lem wrote in this language, each slightly

     differently.

Once your Hungarian throws himself out the window or swallows

     poison,

and the German submerges himself in beer, soccer and pornography,

     you'll long for a country

where a bread crumb

gets picked up from the pavement out of respect.

For this country.

...

Civilization can be a disquieting disappointment, Sosnicki chips away at its' under-carriage in the service of truth and beauty.  The World Shared makes our world smaller, more approachable, in this ever expanding universe.

The Ikarus

is packed, only a few people

in bright cloths, talking softly;

but the engine's temperamental and there are scraps

of a whole bunch of poplar fluff—hence so much babble and stirring.

A girl with a baby is grabbing at these scraps:'

how lucky, if I can catch a lot,

then I'll be happy; let it be so,

but it's not okay to shake like that

and rock back and forth in the squeaking seat,

or eat the fucking candy. Do I have to

think of every loser? For a moment the ground disappears

as I look through the rear window—strips of mud fall of the tires

and a contrail hangs in the air, luminous, among the chestnut branches.

(blogger's note:  Ikarus - is a type of bus, and now in Polish, sans accents)

Ikarus

jest wypelniony, ledwie kilku ludzi

w jasnych ubraniach, rozmawiaja cicho;

lecz silnik ma temperament i strzepkow jest cala

masa topolowego puchu — stad tyle gwaru i ruchu.

Poluje na te strzepki dziewczyna z niemowleciem:

oto szczescie, uda mi sie nalapac

to bede szczesliwa; niechby,

ale nie mozna tak trzasc sie

i kiwac na skrzypiacym siedzeniu,

jesc pierdolonych cukierkow. Czy musze

myslec o kazdym ploamancu? Przez chwile nie widac ziemi,

gdy patrze za siebie przez szybe—paski blota odpadaja od opon

i smuga w powietrzu zostaje, jasna, wsrod kasztanowych galezi.

...

Dariusz Sasnicki (b. 1969, in Kalisz) is a poet, essayist, and editor.  He lives in Poznan, Poland.

Dariusz Sosnicki reading Poznan Poetow

www.boaeditions.org