When it rains
I lie flat spread out distant
in a fog
I feel wet twigs
of blackthorn
stretched out under my skin
gnarled prickly
black
the capillarity
of blood vessels
of the stems of plants
up flows blood rust
bile patina
and colors the plain
on the rim
of the coal basin
a ploughman with a horse
forms a pastoral image
spread out forgotten
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.
