Poets From Poland

"I have been writing for a very long time I suddenly noticed that I don't have a pen in my hand"

"How good I am with you my heart is beating so much I thought human has no heart."

"Don't keep your hands under the covers, it's ugly and unhealthy."

"I am twenty-four led to slaughter I survived."

"forget about us don't ask about our youth leave us"

"A human being is killed like an animal I saw: vans of crazy people who will not be saved."

"I don't believe in turning water into wine I don't believe in forgiveness of sins I don't believe in bodily resurrection."

"I built on the sand And it tumbled down, I built on a rock And it tumbled down. Now when I build, I shall begin With the smoke from the chimney."

"These are empty and unambiguous names: man and animal love and hate enemy and friend darkness and light."

"A rose is a flower or the name of a dead girl. You can place a rose in a warm hand or in the black earth. The red rose screams the golden-haired girl left in silence."

"For centuries, women have been raped in every war. It's even a pleasant activity, sometimes I would rape if I caught up. But my leg, my knee hurts."

"Why, shadow, are you driving away with your arms broken into armor?"

"What have you done to Athens, Socrates?"

"Poles are a great nation and a worthless society."

"I want the Czarnolas thing!"

"Hell is merely the impossibility of love."

"The stones groaned silently. The ideal has hit the pavement."

"Polishness is bitter bread..."

"Please! Leave me for a second life, Like for a second year in the same class."

"Someday I'll be sad again I will come back to you again, Christ... I'm still going to cry so hard, That through my tears I will see you, Christ... And such great mourning I will complain to you, Christ... That my spirit will kneel before You And then my heart will break Christ..."

"Everyone kiss my ass."

"Life is torture. It's best not to be born at all. But this luck is one in a thousand."

"And I played... And I feel even sadder."

"You ask what is the most important thing in my life, I'll tell you: death and love - both."

"I know now: it's as bright as the sun in the sky, And the heart must die under heavy mourning, Because I will never take you to myself for eternity. You will never be me and I will never be you."

"What to do? I have to get drunk on a bottle of ambrosia, What's left of my youthful banquets. I leave with a rose in my hand, with the moon under my armpit, And I leave the rest for new poets."

"Autumn begins with mimosas Golden, fragile and nice It's you, you're that girl Which looked out into the street towards me. The hall smelled of your letters, when I came back from school out of breath, and on the streets in light autumn bright angels flew after me."

"I feel very bad today, I feel very sad, My thoughts are withered, sick, like flowers on a grave, Outside the windows, the sky hangs like a gray canvas. I can't love you or think about you today."

"Bad, bad always and everywhere. This black thread is spinning: She is behind me, in front of me and next to me, She in every breath She in every smile She in tears, in prayer and in hymns..."

"And in spring - let me see spring, not Poland."

"A night with you - this is one thing that works like hashish, Only one thing you can believe in unconsciously. And I don't know if there is love apart from your body And I know you don't love me, that you will forget about me."

"For the country dear where but a crumb of bread Up from the ground with reverence we heave, Adoring thus the Boon by Heaven spread… O Lord I grieve…"

"My destiny is built on the bones with fear my weakness raised on the book of hesitation Have I erected a monument here? here is the fatigue of the sin of bare crags – as The Laureate of Many Sunrises I am a dreams operator"

"Yet I will count all the grains And cast a shadow behind the Blue mountain I will ignite the Truth in your heart petrified Man of iron And I will run across the ocean to you Because it is frozen with the dot over the „i” inverted Desert auroras, mirages They will unseal letters sent to the stars"

"it’s time to start the spectacle, like the feet going uphill putting them on the hot sand it was tried to rub them off with the sharp stones to bruise them with the blames thrown from generation to generation to drown them in the quicksand to close the notebook in this place and open it for old age not until twenty-five years later in some other place and in some other circumstances, and there are many stars left to discover we could name them all with the heliocentric dictionary of our session I guess I won’t be wrong, if I say that it is easier to get some kilograms lost going uphill but if that will relieve us from the sin? which is holding on to the human nature and with a flower called an orchid will change the way to the slope on which the last teardrop ripped away from science will flow down I know that your goal is my salvation give me this bench let me rest on the leafless tree painted with the blood from the wounds blazing with the world heat – I know, all is expanding, and a cut flower withers the red roses that sprouted on the concrete today they will forget the act of the non-aggression pact on the regular basis I gave you my mark in the form of a poem so inhumanly growing inside the mouth, your strength is inexhaustible a new point is falling on the foundation of the world the cobblestone spread with blood I understood, that I have no chance to retreat only to run ahead of me like the cosmos is expanding and maybe someone will turn off the light – and from my sweet round sentences from the gently rounded commas the venom is oozing out."

"here is the sea, when we’re climbing up the ladder of singing: we, who are having the day sweetness penetrating into our lungs. The congratulations, the expressions, the discreet meetings with a reader, which are given by us are – the strict rules. Today, the water is the state of aggregation of the glass fear, the horror of time, which appears on the order of the civilian chapter – That’s what I’ve stated, and after all the city didn’t dazzle me, degrading the scale of poets’ unfortunate deaths, the grudges in the name of the Universe, (the pulled out weeds. I escaped from the crime scene, not feeling the coloration of this poetry). Me, poured into the bottles, I’m putting my hand on the suitcases, being delirious, only on the way having the fixed priorities, (reading poetry – don’t go into the basement, you floating comma), – a root and a leaf are cooperating, an oak is surviving the beginning, the mantra of the lost generations. Where are the clay flasks lying the flasks of absolved whines? And our home, it is an open heart of Descartes, today the abnormality of the art is giving rise to doubts, (everything is based on talents)."

"I turn to Kadia Molodowsky, predominantly known for her poetry, but whose stories minutely depict assimilation in America as she witnessed it in the 1940s and 1950s. All these Jewish women—Julia, Nadia, Patti, Gina, Fradel, Kadia—are my ancestors. They are mayne bobes, mumes, shvester, my grandmothers, aunts, sisters. Mir darfn zikh bakenen. We need to become acquainted."

"As her reputation grew, she came to be called the "First Lady of Yiddish Poetry." Her volumes included Dzike gas (1933), Freydke (1935) and Likht fun dornboym (1965). Extremely versatile, she wrote children's literature, plays and fiction, much of which reflected her concern with 20th-century Jewish history. The play Nokhn got fun midbor (Toward the God of the desert, 1949) and the novel Baym toyer (At the gate, 1967) gave voice to her growing commitment to Zionism. Other fiction included the novel Fun Lublin biz New York (From Lublin to New York, 1942) and the collection A shtub mit zibn fenster (The house with seven windows, 1957). The latter shows Kadia's awareness of the tensions in American Jewish life. "The Lost Shabes," for example, reflects her observations of assimilation and the abandonment of Yiddish. "Oys" (Gone) describes how the Holocaust profoundly affected American Jews' sense of identity. Other stories-"Di kvin" (The Queen)-depict the materialism of American Jews. Her tendency was to romanticize European Jews who, she claims in the preface, didn't need interior decorators for their walls, just wanted to know which wall to face when praying. Still, her depiction of ordinary people is remarkable. Her characters never become bigger than life; rather they remain exactly who they are-ordinary and unaware of the large historical currents in which they are caught and which they shape."

"In her often-quoted poem "Froyen lider" (Women poems), Kadia Molodowsky wrote of Jewish women who appear in her dreams: "Es veln di froyen fun undzer mishpokhe/bay nakht in khaloymes mir kumen un zogn..." ("The women in our family will come to me in my/dreams at night and say...") Written in 1920, the words are stark and unambiguous: "undzer mishpokhe"—our family—the Jewish people, clear and simple, easily identified by the language they spoke-the Yiddish speakers of Europe, of the world. Kadia was rooted in her world and its history. Her writing echoes with the richness of the Yiddish culture which she loved, but which she was also conscious erased women and women's lives. As she herself says in this poem, she was a page torn from a book whose first line is illegible. Still, when Kadia dreamed, she knew and remembered who and what she dreamed of."

"Molodovsky, who knew the Jewish sources and spent many years teaching in Jewish schools, turned poetry into a conduit through which the biblical matriarchs could express their fellow feeling for every kind of sorrow"

"The young man wiped the fingers of his hand with his handkerchief, as if he wanted to wipe away the shame"

"The sorrow of all the poor people of the hill fell upon Feyge-Tsipe and spread across the whole house."

"...in a city, when the tongues start wagging, God protect us from what can happen."

"One rich man is drawn to another."

"This was the happiest laughter that was ever heard on the hill."

"After the meal ended, the little flames of the Sabbath candles began to leap and then to go out, and the darkness threw sadness across the table."

"Yeah, yeah," the gentile said. "A bad dream will bring life to an end."

"If Mr. Kasher could have gotten rid of just one word in the English language, he would have banished the word funny. (first lines of "In a Living Room" 1947 story)"

"It was one of those blessedly beautiful afternoons at Brighton Beach, when the sky is so distinctly clear, it was as if it had been washed with a heavenly blue, and the sea looked exactly as if a choirmaster had given the waves their tempo, so that they ebbed and flowed in a harmonious murmur. In short, it was a very beautiful afternoon. (first lines of "The Rafalovitches" 1947 story)"

"When a person gets rich suddenly, it's not so much apparent in any one thing so much as it is in his eyes and his lapels. His eyes stiffen up and so do his lapels. (first lines of "The Brothers")"