Two Poems

a woman was carrying a bundle,
in the bundle were dead children
and a wooden head, a memento.
a wooden bell. at times what you need to know about a dream

is what you know about death – inside that head,
slanting script, the selling of rags
and belongings, abrupt struggle with relief,
drunkenness, but that’s another map,

equally kind. like a fin
before it emerges from water,
takes the shape of papillary lines
and starts counting coins in the pockets. or

else – she’s not
in my eye, looking, smooth,
as if i bought the eye in a shop
and stuffed dirt into it, that history

of the most difficult translation:
i – you.
accidental discovery:
people die.

and dying i’d be afraid of three things:
that which was always as if beyond me,
that one day i’ll be claimed by another speech,

and that i’ve lived exclusively for myself,
but night, in which absentmindedly i dipped my hands
was the beginning and end of not my body

and it invented a blueprint of me –
in the night there’re several me’s

Photo by Katarzyna Szweda

Roman Honet

Roman Honet (b. 1974) has published nine volumes of poetry, most recently: pamięć niczyja, ciało moje [nobody’s memory, my body] (2024), as well as two selected editions: moja [mine] (2008) and rozmowa trwa dalej [the conversation continues] (2016). Editor of the anthology Poeci na nowy wiek [Poets for a New Century] (2010), co-editor of Antologia nowej poezji polskiej 1990-2000 [Anthology of New Polish Poetry 1990–2000] (2004). Winner of the Wisława Szymborska Award in 2015 for the volume świat był mój [the world was mine]. His poetry was translated into Czech, Spanish, Lithuanian, Latvian, German, Norwegian, Slovenian, and English. In recent years a selection of his poetry has appeared in Russian as Месса Лядзинского [The Mass of Ladziński] (trans. Sergei Moreino, Moscow, 2017), a volume in Ukrainian as Світ належав мені (trans. Yurii Zavadskyi, Ternopil, 2019), a Serbian edition as Svet je bio mój (trans. Biserka Rajčić, Belgrade, 2021), and a selection of poems in Latvian, Kauns un ķirši [shame and cherries] (trans. Sergei Moreino, Riga: Literatūras Kombains, 2026).

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Roman Honet

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Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese

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Two Poems

Roman Honet

Translation

Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese

Explore more Poetry in translation

Analogy

Spring 2018

Loose Thread

Summer 2019

Thursday

Winter 2023 Print Issue

SUPPORT DIVERSE VOICESIN LITERATURE

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