Translating American Poets

by Julia Hartwig

They might not care for such a change of place--
from Long Island Santa Barbara the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco
from a trapper's shack on a clear stream in Pate Valley
from beds where they lie still half asleep
from smoke-filled taverns and clubs
from motels where they throw off shoes after a day's hike in a clay valley
from a secluded farm in Missouri from a well-to-do house in Washington
from a night bar in New York City--
they rebel against this uncalled-for move
to Eastern Europe which they know so little
though it's not you but your poems that have wandered over to us
You don't even know what a warm welcome met them here
for reasons I can only guess without certainty:
because you honored in them your anxieties and vanities
your maladies and follies your cars and flowers
your travels and landscapes gathered along the way
your hatred of big cities and rapture over them
Chicago New York New Orleans the Golden Gate Brooklyn Bridge
names dreamed for years by European teen-agers
together with hopes for great change and fame
this is the dowry you bring
in poems not aiming at greatness but showing the calendar of ordinariness
seen through the eyes of a farmer a neurotic and hypochondriac
a dipsomaniac a nymphomaniac and a tramp
brimming with life trampled by a gang of misfortunes and failures
proud of democracy and cursing its abuses
It is wonderful to be able to look at one's own country
as at a man whose virtues and vices can be discussed without fear

(translated, from the Polish, by John and Bogdana Carpenter)