Three Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski

1. Beautiful

Poetry must be beautiful,
with beautiful words and beautiful
symbols.
Even death in poems must be dignified,
solemn and beautiful.
Worms in a beautiful coffin
must also be beautiful.
Best dressed in beautiful robes
with makeup on their glossy mouths.
A priest must be beautiful,
even when he is a hundred
years old.
Everything has to be beautiful.
Life and death are beautiful.

2. I Would Like to Wake Up 

Some people do not like wolves
and say that wolves attack children
who come home with heavy schoolbags.

Other people love pigs while eating pig
meat every day. I would like to wake up someday
among people who respect both
wolves and pigs.

In the world of dwarves who eat nuts
and cinnamon-spiced cabbage.

3. Something

Surely something can be done.
But what specifically?
This is not known.

But there is still something
that can be done.
This is a popular dilemma.

It appears even when we perform
our dream activities.

Grzegorz Wróblewski was born in 1962 in Gdańsk and grew up in Warsaw. Since 1985 he has been living in Copenhagen. English translations of his work are available in Our Flying Objects (trans. Joel Leonard Katz, Rod Mengham, Malcolm Sinclair, Adam Zdrodowski, Equipage, 2007), A Marzipan Factory (trans. Adam Zdrodowski, Otoliths, 2010), Kopenhaga (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Zephyr Press, 2013), Let’s Go Back to the Mainland (trans. Agnieszka Pokojska, Červená Barva Press, 2014), Zero Visibility (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Phoneme Media, 2017). Asemic writing book Shanty Town (Post-Asemic Press, 2022).

Marcus Slease is a (mostly) surreal-absurd writer from Portadown, N. Ireland. He is the author of Puppy (Beir Bua Press), Never Mind the Beasts (Dostoyevsky Wannabe),  The Green Monk (Boiler House Press), and Play Yr Kardz Right (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), among others. His poetry has been translated into Polish and Danish and has appeared or is forthcoming in various magazines and anthologies, including: Tin House, Poetry, The Lincoln Review, Bath Magg, New World Writing, Tupelo Quarterly, and in the Best British Poetry series. He lives in Sitges, Spain. Find out more at: Never Mind the Beasts (www.nevermindthebeasts.com)

Note: Marcus and Grzegorz have translated these poems together.