the lips of truth
are pressed tight
a finger to the lips
tells us
the time has come
for silence
no one will answer
the question
what is truth
the one who knew
the one who was the truth
is gone
Tadeusz Różewicz is widely considered to be the most influential post-war Polish poet. He has published over twenty volumes of poetry, and is a major playwright, essayist, and fiction writer. He lives in Wrocław, Poland. Sobbing Superpower: Selected Poems of Tadeusz Różewicz, translated and annotated by Joanna Trzeciak, will be published by Norton in 2010.
Joanna Trzeciak teaches in the NEOMFA program in creative writing at Kent State University. Her translations have appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s, Poetry, and the Paris Review, among others. Miracle Fair, a collection of her translations of Wisława Szymborska, was awarded the 2001 Heldt Translation Prize.
