Climate
FOUR POEMS BY GRZEGORZ WRÓBLEWSKI
Art by Fanny Beury
Translator’s Note
Wróblewski’s work is a kind of minimalist anti-poetry that is a continuation of the now 80-year history of anti-poetry in Poland starting with the inter and post war disillusionment of Tadeusz Różewicz and later in his Nobel Laureate contemporaries Wisława Szymborska and Czesław Miłosz. Like Zbigniew Herbert and Anna Świr, these poets share a cynical type of humorous irony that can only be described as Slavic ennui—it is a kind of mirthful sadness or grim and glib joy that was born out of a history of world war, genocide, survivance, and the sinister censorship of the times of Soviet-run Cold War Poland. As we read in Argonne forest, Wróblewski’s world is a cynical smirk at the ending of the world. It is a lament rolled into a joke. There is a dark cheekiness that comes from these difficulties, one that feels unique to Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia, Czechia, Lithuania, and others. These poetries have found readership abroad and will continue to attract readers for their clever, albeit gloomy beauties.
Wróblewski’s poetry, specifically, draws inspiration from his work as a painter and asemic practices, and this volume is unique in that it amplifies his spare minimalism into a hybrid form blurring prose, drama, and poetry. His newest poems are inspired by his asemic practices as a visual artist. These poems shake and shudder all while showing a sparser, more biting language than his earlier work.
Peter Burzyński
Four poems
Translated from Polish by Peter Burzyński
Malfunctioning Stars
I feel like I’m barely hanging on
to the inside of a vacuum.
I dream of those long dead—friends from school, etc.
They slur nonsense about coral reefs exactly
as if they were drunk ecologists from the late 20th century.
I can’t comprehend an afterlife.
Could it be that they were waiting for a password or something
else before the guards would let them up the elevator to heaven?
What the hell do they want? To come up out of their graves
to rebuild the airport in Kastrup?
Or perhaps
grow
some strawberries?
Valhalla
When the pandemic first began, the herons in Copenhagen
began multiplying and the descendants of Vikings here
rushed to plunder canned beans.
Valhalla fell—it was once the land of eternal joy,
but now the Valkyries exchange gold
for toilet paper.
Was this not the end of the world yet? I couldn’t decide.
Yup , it was the end.
Those who survived can no longer look me in the eye.
Secret
He wanted to confess a secret he’d kept
his whole life.
He drove me all the way to Gribskov,
a megalithic forest on the outskirts of Copenhagen.
Maybe he’d hidden a body in the swamp?
The orange sun and blood-red sky
were bad omens…
We arrived at a formation of stones.
“Would you be interested in buying a sports watch?”
he asked me in a hushed voice.
I replied:
“Each and every decision I make
requires thorough consideration.”
The Argonne Forest
A fresh chrysalis requires fresh energy. (But are there any other forests for us?)
Our muscles quiver. Insects and clay—creatures transform
quickly, mindlessly, silently flowing across the sky
like lost ships in the night.
You can gorge yourself on olives,
but how can you truly be radical, if conservatives
are proposing
a vacation inside heated ball
stifled by the heft of boredom
of the Hellenistic Baroque?
Just let your imagination run
wild.
Four poems
By Grzegorz Wróblewski
AWARIA GWIAZDY
Czuję się, jakbym trzymał za sznurki próżnię.
Śnią mi się dawno już zmarli, szkolni koledzy…
Opowiadają bzdury o rafach koralowych,
zupełnie jak pijani ekolodzy z końcówki XX wieku.
Nie potrafię zrozumieć zaświatów.
Czyżby czekali na hasło, żeby ich patrole znów
uruchomiły windę? Chcą wyjść na powierzchnię,
odbudować lotnisko Kastrup,
zacząć hodować truskawki?
VALHALLA
Kiedy nastąpił początek pandemii i rozmnożyły się
kopenhaskie czaple, potomkowie wikingów
ruszyli na grabież fasoli w puszkach.
Runęła Valhalla, kraina wiecznego szczęścia,
walkirie zaczęły wymieniać złoto
na rolki toaletowego papieru.
Czy tu już koniec świata? - zastanawiałem się.
Tak, to był koniec.
Ci, którzy przeżyli, wolą teraz nie spoglądać mi w twarz.
SEKRET
Chciał mi wyznać życiowy sekret.
Wywiózł mnie aż do Gribskov,
lasu dolmenów pod Kopenhagą.
Może ukrył kogoś w mokradłach?
Pomarańczowe słońce i krwiste niebo
nie wróżyły
niczego dobrego…
Dotarliśmy do formacji buków.
Czy rozważasz kupno sportowego
zegarka?
- zapytał ściszonym głosem.
Każda decyzja wymaga gruntownego
przemyślenia
- odpowiedziałem mu.
ARGON
Poczwarka potrzebuje świeżej energii. (A czy są inne lasy?).
Mięsne podróże, owad i glina. Istoty lądowe przemieniają się
szybko w cicho płynące po niebie, bezmyślne
statki.
Napchać się oliwkami,
ale jak można być radykałem, jeśli konserwatyści
proponują
wycieczki do wnętrza rozgrzanej kuli, przykrytej potęgą nudnego,
hellenistycznego baroku.
Uruchom tylko wyobraźnię.
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Grzegorz Wróblewski is a poet and visual artist who was born in 1962 in Gdańsk, and grew up in Warsaw. Since 1985 he has been living in Copenhagen. English translations of his work are available in Our Flying Objects (trans. Joel Leonard Katz, Rod Mengham, Malcolm Sinclair, Adam Zdrodowski, Equipage, 2007), A Marzipan Factory (trans. Adam Zdrodowski, Otoliths, 2010), Kopenhaga (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Zephyr Press, 2013), Let's Go Back to the Mainland (trans. Agnieszka Pokojska, Červená Barva Press, 2014), Zero Visibility (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Phoneme Media, 2017), Dear Beloved Humans (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Lavender/Dialogos Books, 2023), I Really Like Lovers of Poetry(trans. Grzegorz Wróblewski & Marcus Silcock Slease, Červená Barva Press, 2024), Tatami in Kyoto (Literary Waves Publishing, 2024). Asemic writing book Shanty Town (Post-Asemic Press, 2022).
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Peter Burzyński, Ph.D. is the author of the chapbook A Year Alone inside of Woodland Pattern (Adjunct Press, 2022) and the translator of Martyna Buliżańska’s This Is My Earth (New American Press, 2019). His first full-length book of poetry, Infinite Zero, will be published in 2025 by Writ Large Press. He is currently working on translations of the Polish poets Grzegorz Wróblewski, Anna Matysiak, and Joanna Guzik. His poetry, translations, reviews, and essays have appeared in The Georgia Review, jacket2, The Brooklyn Rail, jubilat, RHINO, Storm Cellar, Thrush, Prick of the Spindle, Prelude, Your Impossible Voice, and Forklift Ohio, among others. In Fall 2023 Burzyński served as the Postdoctoral Fulbright Scholar in the Slovak Republic teaching graduate courses in literature. In the Summer of 2025 he will attend both the ALTA and Bread Loaf Translation residencies as a Fellowship recipient. He is the son of immigrants who call him on the phone every day.