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WWII Polish poet

Wislawa Szymborski--Polish

 

Wislawa Szymborska
(1923-    )

 

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996, translator and essayist.  Born in Bnin, Poland in 1923, her poetry books are revered in her native land, and have been translated into dozens of languages. During World War II, she continued her studies and worked as a railroad employee and managed to avoid being sent to Germany as a forced laborer. At this time she began illustrating English language textbooks in earnest.  She published her first poem, “Szukam slowa” (“I seek the word”), in 1945.  Her first book of poetry was published in 1949, but did not meet the specification of the Communist Party.  In these early years Szymborska kept close to the party line, but managed to leave the party in 1966.  In the years leading up to her leaving the party she intensified her opposition to the government. 


Tortures

Nothing has changed.
The body is susceptible to pain,
it must eat and breathe air and sleep,
it has thin skin and blood right underneath,
an adequate stock of teeth and nails,
its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable.
In tortures all this is taken into account.

Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it shuddered
before the founding of Rome and after,
in the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are as they were, it's just the earth that's grown smaller,
and whatever happens seems right on the other side of the wall.

Nothing has changed. It's just that there are more people,
besides the old offenses new ones have appeared,
real, imaginary, temporary, and none,
but the howl with which the body responds to them,
was, is and ever will be a howl of innocence
according to the time-honored scale and tonality.

Nothing has changed. Maybe just the manners, ceremonies, dances.
Yet the movement of the hands in protecting the head is the same.
The body writhes, jerks and tries to pull away,
its legs give out, it falls, the knees fly up,
it turns blue, swells, salivates and bleeds.

Nothing has changed. Except for the course of boundaries,
the line of forests, coasts, deserts and glaciers.
Amid these landscapes traipses the soul,
disappears, comes back, draws nearer, moves away,
alien to itself, elusive, at times certain, at others uncertain of its own existence,
while the body is and is and is
and has no place of its own.

 


Once We Knew...

Once we knew the world well.
It was so small it could fit in a handshake,
so easy you could describe it with a smile,
it was ordinary as old truths in a prayer.

History did not welcome us with fanfares.
It threw filthy dust into our eyes.
Before us only dead-end roads,
poisoned wells, bitter bread.

Our war's booty is knowledge of the world.
It is so large it can fit in a handshake.
so difficult you can describe it with a smile,
it is extraordinary as old truths in a prayer.

 

 

Still 

In sealed box cars travel
names across the land,
and how far they will travel so,
and will they ever get out,
don't ask, I won't say, I don't know.

The name Nathan strikes fist against wall,
the name Isaac, demented, sings,
the name Sarah calls out for water
for the name Aaron that's dying of thirst.

Don't jump while it's moving, name David.
You're a name that dooms to defeat,
given to no one, and homeless,
too heavy to bear in this land.

Let your son have a Slavic name,
for here they count hairs on the head,
for here they tell good from evil
by names and by eyelids' shape.

Don't jump while it's moving. Your son will be Lech.
Don't jump while it's moving. Not time yet.
Don't jump. The night echoes like laughter
mocking clatter of wheels upon tracks.

A cloud made of people moved over the land,
a big cloud gives a small rain, one tear,
a small rain-one tear, a dry season.
Tracks lead off into black forest.

Cor-rect, cor-rect clicks the wheel. Gladless forest.
Cor-rect, cor-rect. Through the forest a convoy of clamors.
Cor-rect, cor-rect. Awakened in the night I hear
cor-rect, cor-rect, crash of silence on silence.

 

Translated from Polish by Magnus J. Krynski

 

 

 

Wladyslaw Szlengel--Polish

 

Władysław Szlengel
(1914-1943)

Poet, composer, and short-story writer, Wladyslaw Szlengel was born in Poland, in 1914.  He started writing as a youth, and his poems “were highly popular in the [Warsaw] ghetto and reflected its mood.”  It was reported that they were copied, passed hand to hand, and were frequently recited at meetings.  For a period of time Szlengel worked as a ghetto policeman, but resigned, since he found it impossible to roundup Jews for deportation.  In 1939, he participated in a campaign against the Nazi.  For a period of time he was the only writer left in the ghetto so he became its chronicler.  Szlengel was killed in April 1943 under unknown circumstances.


"An Account with God" ...

Do You still expect that
The day after tomorrow like in the Testament
When going to the Prussian gas
I shall still say "Amen" to You?

Hear, O God of the Germans,
the Jews praying amid the barbarians,
an iron rod or a grenade in their hands.
Give us, O God, a bloody fight
and let us die a swift death!

 


A Cry in the Night
 

These poems were written between the first
And second upheavals,
In the last dying days of agony
Of the largest Jewish community in Europe
Between July and September 1942,
I dedicate it to people on whom I could lean
Myself in the hours of blizzard and complete chaos
To those few  who knew in the whirlpool of events,
In the dance of fate death and protectionism
Remember, that not only family...not only
Connections... not only money...
But also must be saved those few and

the last of the Mohicans,
Whose entire capital and
Entire arms is only the word,
To those to whom my cry has reached...

My Cry...

in the night...

 

Translated by John Nowik and Ada Holtzman

 

 

Two Gentlemen in the Snow

Snow is falling, angry, pervasive,
trimming my collar with white wool.
We’re together in the empty street,
a Jewish slave-worker and a soldier.

I am homeless, and so are you.
Time’s boulder is crushing our lives.
So much divides us … just think of it …
but now the snow unites us.

Because of you I can’t budge.
You too—youhave no choice.
Which one of us is holding whom?
It’s a third one who holds us both.

Your uniform is dashing, I admit.
I wouldn’t dare compare with you,
though the snow can’t tell us apart
the Jew and the handsome soldier.

Snow falls equally on me and on you.
It sheds so much white peace …
We both stare through the white veil
at the faraway light in the dusk.

Look, what am I up to? What are you up to?
What for? And who needs it?
Listen, my buddy, it snows and snows,
let’s split, and let’s go home.

Translation by Yala Korwin

 

 

The Little Station: Treblinka


On the Tluszcz-Warsaw line,
from the Warsaw-East station,
you leave by rail
and ride straight on …
The journey lasts, sometimes
five hours & 45 minutes,
but sometimes it lasts
a lifetime until death.

The station is tiny.
Three fir trees grow there.
The sign is ordinary:
it’s the Treblinka station.

No cashier’s window,
No porter in view,
No return tickets,
Not even for a million.

There, no one is waiting,
no one waves a kerchief,
and only silence hovers,
deaf emptiness greets you.

Silent the flagpole,
silent the fir trees,
silent the black sign:
it’s the Treblinka station.

Only an old poster
with fading letters 
advises:
“Cook with gas.”


 

Tadeusz Rózewicz--Polish

 

    

Tadeusz Rózewicz
(1921-    )

 

Yala Korwin--Polish

Yala Korwin
 
Author of one of the most remembered poems of the Holocaust, “The Little Boy with His Hands Up,” Yala Korwin, was born in Poland. She was interned in a concentration camp in Germany during the war. Following liberation she went to France as a refugee and stayed there for 10 years. She immigrated to the U.S. in 1965. Her book, To Tell the Story: Poems of the Holocaust, was published in 1987. She is a frequent contributor to journals including Midstream, Blue Unicorn, Orphic Lute and Piedmont Literary Review. Her work also appears in the Shoah project and a number of anthologies. Korwin is also a visual artist.
 

 

Such Innocent Words

 
Train   camp   shower
Gas   furnace   smoke
Bent and transfigured
 
Shoes   hair   soap
Mattress   lampshade
Twisted   defiled forever
 
Common words
Transmuted
Horror   loss
 

 

I Lost My Mother Tongue in the War

"Only in the mother tongue can one speak his own truth." -- Paul Celan

Did you say that my words sound queer?
I lost my mother tongue in the war.
I'm sorry I disturb your ear.

Some lose their limbs when they volunteer,
I lost my tongue, as I said before.
That's why my words to you sound queer.

My tongue atrophied, fate brought me here.
The new tongue's clumsy; wound's still sore.
I'm sorry I disturb your ear.

The graft succeeded. Cost me dear.
It helped, but it could not restore.
I know my words to you sound queer.

Therapy goes on, and I fear
My case is hopeless evermore.
I'm sorry I disturb your ear.

Deprived of all that I held dear,
I went through insult, hunger, gore.
I know my words to you sound queer,
But I've stopped caring about your ear.

 

 

The Little Boy with His Hands Up

Your open palms raised in the air
like two white doves
frame your meager face,
your face contorted with fear,
grown old with knowledge beyond your years.
Not yet ten. Eight? Seven?
Not yet compelled to mark
with a blue star on white badge
your Jewishness.

No need to brand the very young.
They will meekly follow their mothers.

You are standing apart
Against the flock of women and their brood
With blank, resigned stares.
All the torments of this harassed crowd
Are written on your face.
In your dark eyes—a vision of horror.
You have seen Death already
On the ghetto streets, haven't you?
Do you recognize it in the emblems
Of the SS-man facing you with his camera?

Like a lost lamb you are standing
Apart and forlorn beholding your own fate.

Where is your mother, little boy?
Is she the woman glancing over her shoulder
At the gunmen at the bunker's entrance?
Is it she who lovingly, though in haste,
Buttoned your coat, straightened your cap,
Pulled up your socks?
Is it her dreams of you, her dreams
Of a future Einstein, a Spinoza,
Another Heine or Halévy
They will murder soon?
Or are you orphaned already?
But even if you still have a mother,
She won't be allowed to comfort you
In her arms.

Her tired arms loaded with useless bundles
Must remain up in submission.

Alone you will march
Among other lonely wretches
Toward your martyrdom.

Your image will remain with us
And grow and grow
To immense proportions,
To haunt the callous world,
To accuse it, with ever stronger voice,
In the name of the million youngsters
Who lie, pitiful rag-dolls,
Their eyes forever closed.

Published in To Tell the Story - Poems Of the Holocaust, Holocaust Publications, NY

 


 


Zbigniew Herbert--Polish

 

        

Zbigniew Herbert
(1924-1998)

 

Herbert was born in 1924 in a Polish-speaking area of the former Soviet Union. During the war he studied Polish literature at the clandestine Jan Kazimierz University. It was at this time he came into contact with the Home Army resistance movement of which he became an active member. He moved to Cracow in 1944 where he studied law and philosophy. His first collection of poetry, String of Light, was published in 1956. Throughout the 1950s he was forced to work at menial jobs because of his refusal to adhere to the official Communist party doctrine. He became editor of Poezja, one of Poland’s leading poetry magazine, a position he held from 1963-1968. His early work was translated into English in 1968, by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott,  making him one of the most popular contemporary poets in the English-speaking world. He died in Warsaw in 1998. 


Report from the Besieged City

Too old to carry arms and fight like the others -

they graciously gave me the inferior role of chronicler

I record - I don't know for whom - the history of the siege

I am supposed to be exact but I don't know when the invasion began

two hundred years ago in December in September perhaps yesterday at dawn

everyone here suffers from a loss of the sense of time

all we have left is the place the attachment to the place

we still rule over the ruins of temples spectres of gardens and houses

if we lose the ruins nothing will be left

I write as I can in the rhythm of interminable weeks

monday: empty storehouses a rat became the unit of currency

tuesday: the mayor murdered by unknown assailants

wednesday: negotiations for a cease-fire the enemy has imprisoned our messengers

we don't know where they are held that is the place of torture

thursday: after a stormy meeting a majority of voices rejected

the motion of the spice merchants for unconditional surrender

friday: the beginning of the plague saturday: our invincible defender

N.N. committed suicide sunday: no more water we drove back

an attack at the eastern gate called the Gate of the Alliance

all of this is monotonous I know it can't move anyone

I avoid any commentary I keep a tight hold on my emotions I write about the facts

only they it seems are appreciated in foreign markets

yet with a certain pride I would like to inform the world

that thanks to the war we have raised a new species of children

our children don’t like fairy tales they play at killing

awake and asleep they dream of soup of bread and bones

just like dogs and cats

in the evening I like to wander near the outposts of the city

along the frontier of our uncertain freedom.

I look at the swarms of soldiers below their lights

I listen to the noise of drums barbarian shrieks

truly it is inconceivable the City is still defending itself

the siege has lasted a long time the enemies must take turns

nothing unites them except the desire for our extermination

Goths the Tartars Swedes troops of the Emperor regiments of the Transfiguration

who can count them

the colours of their banners change like the forest on the horizon

from delicate bird's yellow in spring through green through red to winter's black

and so in the evening released from facts I can think

about distant ancient matters for example our

friends beyond the sea I know they sincerely sympathize

they send us flour lard sacks of comfort and good advice

they don’t even know their fathers betrayed us

our former allies at the time of the second Apocalypse

their sons are blameless they deserve our gratitude therefore we are grateful

they have not experienced a siege as long as eternity

those struck by misfortune are always alone

the defenders of the Dalai Lama the Kurds the Afghan mountaineers

now as I write these words the advocates of conciliation

have won the upper hand over the party of inflexibles

a normal hesitation of moods fate still hangs in the balance

cemeteries grow larger the number of defenders is smaller

yet the defence continues it will continue to the end

and if the City falls but a single man escapes

he will carry the City within himself on the roads of exile

he will be the City

we look in the face of hunger the face of fire face of death

worst of all - the face of betrayal

and only our dreams have not been humiliated

 

 

A Ballad That We Do Not Perish

Those who sailed at dawn
but will never return
left their trace on a wave—

a shell fell to the bottom of the sea
beautiful as lips turned to stone
those who walked on a sandy road
but could not reach the shuttered windows
though they already saw the roofs—

they have found shelter in a bell of air
but those who leave behind only
a room grown cold a few books
an empty inkwell white paper—

in truth they have not completely died
their whisper travels through thickets of wallpaper
their level head still lives in the ceiling
their paradise was made of air
of water lime and earth an angel of wind
will pulverize the body in its hand
they will be carried over the meadows of this world


 

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