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Translation - art & business » Literature / Poetry »
Off topic: Happy Thanksgiving!
Thread poster: Jacek Krankowski (X)
Jacek Krankowski (X)
Jacek Krankowski (X)  Identity Verified
English to Polish
+ ...
Nov 28, 2002

Spotted today in a September 2001 issue of The New Yorker:



TRY TO PRAISE THE MUTILATED WORLD



Try to praise the mutilated world.

Remember June\'s long days,

and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.

The nettles that methodically overgrow

the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.

You watched the stylish yachts and ships;

one of them had a long trip ahe... See more
Spotted today in a September 2001 issue of The New Yorker:



TRY TO PRAISE THE MUTILATED WORLD



Try to praise the mutilated world.

Remember June\'s long days,

and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.

The nettles that methodically overgrow

the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.

You watched the stylish yachts and ships;

one of them had a long trip ahead of it,

while salty oblivion awaited others.

You\'ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,

you\'ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.

You should praise the mutilated world.

Remember the moments when we were together

in a white room and the curtain fluttered.

Return in thought to the concert where music flared.

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn

and leaves eddied over the earth\'s scars.

Praise the mutilated world

and the gray feather a thrush lost,

and the gentle light that strays and vanishes

and returns.



Adam Zagajewski

(Translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh)

***

Yesterday, in an article entitled \"A New Thanksgiving Tradition: Ingratitude,\" The New York Times wrote that Americans have always had trouble saying thank you: \"Last year, national tragedy prompted some into the Pilgrim-like reflection that, horrible as things were, one should give thanks that they were not worse. Why are bad times the only times we can appreciate what we have?\"

(Judith Martin, author of \"Star-Spangled Manners...\"



Is that true?



Happy holiday to all my American friends!



I dedicate to you another Polish poem, by Czeslaw Milosz who for so many years lived in your land and won Nobel Prize here:



THE SECOND SPACE



The heavenly halls are so spacious!

Ascend to them on stairs of air.

Above white clouds the hanging celestial gardens.



A soul tears away from the body and soars.

It remembers that there\'s up and down.



Have we really lost faith in a second space?

They\'ve dissolved, disappeared, both Heaven and Hell?



Without unearthly meadows how will one meet salvation?

Where will the gathering of the damned find its abode?



Let us weep, lament the enormous loss.

Let us smear our faces with coal, disarrange our hair.



Let us implore, so that it is returned to us,

The second space.



Czeslaw Milosz

(Translated, from the Polish, by the author, Robert Hass, and Renata Gorczynski; in: The New Yorker, Nov. 4, 2002)

[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-11-28 15:42 ] ▲ Collapse
 
Andrea Bullrich
Andrea Bullrich  Identity Verified
Local time: 17:47
English to Spanish
Thanks Nov 28, 2002

Thanks, Jacek, for the beautiful poems, and Happy Thanksgiving to all,



Andrea
 


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