from Krwotoki i wiewiórki (“Hemorrhages and Squirrels,” 2021)
Translated from the Polish by Piotr Florczyk
Poem About a City
Or rather what it would be like if not for the fumes from factory smokestacks and the junky diesels. Certainly, blue feathers would float around carefree at the top of the city. A pair of peregrine falcons could breed again and again in a wooden box with a terrace. Instead of hunting pigeons, they would eat curdled milk and cauliflower steak. Now look up: there, where the spiers of skyscrapers stick up, a crowd of onlookers assists with the ringing.
Poem About Birds
Contrary to appearances, there is very little under a bird’s dense plumage. A slender body with a bloated belly. We feel sorry for the birdies, and baby-talk about their claws to make them more like dolls and knick-knacks on the bookshelf. When they want to sing, we invite the upstairs neighbors over for a glass of prosecco. When they’re silent, we poke our fingers at their beaks. If they felt like it, they would leave behind their living rooms with stained sectionals and redeem a travel voucher in one of the Sultanates.
Poem About Demons
Who reside in refugees, in kayaks during a storm, but also in safety pins, straps and combs. And in graves, beside which we unfold our chairs. We’d love to stuff all the demons inside the person with jumpy polling numbers. Just wait till she turns into a bloodthirsty vampire and sets off on a long journey.
Poem About Falling
And about how beating the drum is the hardest. Or just harder than playing the violin. Even more so since in group settings the principles aren’t those who play first fiddle but those who walk in the front without any instruments. Their role is to only count the steps. And give out scholarships to the most talented artists. To all but the drummers.
Poem About Philosophers
And illustrators. They’re all named Edmund or Frederick. In a sense it is one and the same person. Some say that those who sing, pray twice. Those who draw, think twice. It’s clear: it must be so if one works in a mill. And we’re not talking about rugby players.
Jakub Kornhauser is a poet, essayist, translator, editor, and literary scholar, and co-founder of the Center for Avant-Garde Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He has published five volumes of prose poetry, including Drożdżownia [The Yeast Factory], which won the 2016 Wisława Szymborska Award; a best-selling collection of bicycle essays, Premie górskie najwyższej kategorii [Mountain Climbs Hors Categorie]; several monographs on the European avant-gardes, as well as translations of books by Henri Michaux, Gherasim Luca, Gellu Naum, and Miroljub Todorović. He lives in Kraków, Poland.
Piotr Florczyk is an award-winning poet, scholar, and translator. For more info about him and his work, please visit: www.piotrflorczyk.com
World Poetry Review 