We will not leave this cafe! As a sign of fidelity we put our lips against the multiple imprints of lipstick on the cups. If our fatherland has not come here with us – we have to call this place a fatherland, and what's besieging us from outside is also our fatherland, only now it wants us.
By Marcin Świetlicki
Translated by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
From NIGHT TRUCK DRIVER
by Marcin Świetlicki
Translated from the Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
Published by Zephyr Press (2020)
Born in Lublin in 1961, Marcin Świetlicki is a poet, crime writer and musician who has published thirteen poetry collections, and writes most of the lyrics for two bands he regularly performs with. He co-edited (with Marcin Baran and Marcin Sendecki) the poetry anthology Długie pożegnanie. Tribute to Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye. Tribute to Raymond Chandler). He has received several major awards, including the 1996 Kościelski Foundation Prize, the Silesius Wroclaw Poetic Award (2012) and the Lublin Poetical Stone Award (2014), for lifetime achievement.
Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese writes with/in English, Polish and Danish. Her translation of Nothing More, by Krystyna Miłobędzka, was shortlisted for the 2015 Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize. She translated Salt Monody, poems by Marzanna Kielar, and co-edited the anthology of contemporary Polish poetry, Carnivorous Boy Carnivorous Bird: Poetry from Poland, both published by Zephyr Press. She co-curates “Transreading” courses on translational and hybrid poetries for the Poetry School in London. Her multilingual Thirst in Three Directions is forthcoming in 2022. She lives in Copenhagen.
Photo by Lisa Kalloo
Check out the Poetry Travels book list on bookshop.org.
Read previous poems from Poetry Travels:
FISH by Jana Putrle Srdić, translated by Barbara Jurša
THE WELL by Maarja Pärtna, translated by Jayde Will
THE SHADOW by Pentti Saarikoski, translated by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah
A FAREWELL TO MY DEAD CLASS by Irit Amiel, translated by Anna Blasiak and Marta Dziurosz
THE GIRLS IN BERGEN-BELSEN by Nora Gomringer, translated by Annie Rutherford
DECEMBER, by Jaume Subirana, translated by Christopher Whyte
ROSE RED, by Ulrike Almut Sandig, translated by Karen Leeder
*** (I D[R]IPPED MY PEN…) by Mario Martín Gijón, translated by Terence Dooley
WHAT COMES by Magda Cârneci, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Mădălina Bănucu
TRANSLATION by Justyna Bargielska, translated by Maria Jastrzębska
*** (MY EYES, DENSE NIGHT…) by Gëzim Hajdari, translated by Ian Seed