Anna Kamieńska

POETRY: Into Solitude, by Anna Kamieńska

January 4, 2017

We descend into solitude step by step further and further down stanzas of verses into depths never expected determined to live without poor substitutes in a cruel and impossible purity there at the very bottom to regain all those who huddle at the gate of this wide-open emptiness grandmothers aunts and uncles already forgotten strangers who once crossed a courtyard someone out of work who knocked on the window someone passed by on a footbridge the dead the living it doesn’t matter the beautiful boy who stood below the pulpit looking like an angel almost an angel and the one who hit me on the forehead with a stone where a mark still remains and the washerwoman who reappeared at our home like Kronos and went away bent under the weight [...]

POETRY: At The Border Of Paradise by Anna Kamieńska

November 23, 2016

It’s strange that green valleys are still here as if happiness slept in them and shady streams we once knew for sure existed and that there still are roofs under which small children sleep filling the house with a different silence. It’s strange that clouds here still follow the sun like gliding birds and that there still is simple human goodness besides what aspires upwards that pure music stands at the door which suddenly seems like a palace portico It’s strange that we still want so much to love and cry [...]

POETRY: Small Things, by Anna Kamieńska

November 4, 2016

It usually starts taking shape from one word reveals itself in one smile sometimes in the blue glint of eyeglasses in a trampled daisy in a splash of light on a path in quivering carrot leaves in a bunch of parsley It comes from laundry hung on a balcony from hands thrust into dough It seeps through closed eyelids as through the prison wall of things of objects of faces of landscapes It’s when you slice bread when you pour out some tea It comes from a broom from a shopping bag from peeling new potatoes from a drop of blood from the prick of a needle when making panties for a child or sewing a button on a husband’s burial shirt It comes out of toil out of care out of immense fatigue in the evening our of a tear wiped away out of [...]

POETRY: Gratitude by Anna Kamieńska

August 31, 2016

A tempest threw a rainbow in my face so that I wanted to fall under the rain to kiss the hands of an old woman to whom I gave my seat to thank everyone for the fact that they exist and at times even feel like smiling I was grateful to young leaves that they were willing to open up to the sun to babies that they still felt like coming into this world to the old that they heroically endure until the end I was full of thanks like a Sunday alms-box I would have embraced death if she’d stopped nearby Gratitude is a scattered homeless [...]

POETRY: Transformation, by Anna Kamieńska

August 12, 2016

To be transformed to turn yourself inside out like a glove to spin like a planet to thread yourself through yourself so that each day penetrates each night so that each word runs to the other side of truth so that each verse comes out of itself and gives off its own light so that each face leaning on a hand sweats into the skin of the palm So that this pen changes into pure silence I wanted to say into love To fall off a horse to smear your face with dust to be blinded to lift yourself and allow yourself to be led like blind Saul to [...]