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the poems are consecutive years, from 1960 to 2010. The poems are short, not wasting words, and at the same time captivating with a delicately expressed, yet powerful punchline in a reflective tone. Most of them are short blank verse poems, but several in a form closer to poetic prose, slightly resem- bling Ewa Lipska’s latest collection, name- ly Listy do pani Schubert (e.g., 1992, 1993, 1998). Which of these forms is closest to you at the moment?
Here are two poems from this collection: 1965 and 1997:
1965
Grandpa braids wreaths from blueberries and clover for me
he teaches me religious and soldier songs he has love and time for me
1997
a good man is one
who does not want to kill me or steal from me or wants
to be provided for by me
Translated by Kalina Duszka
There are subject areas I find impossible to turn into poems, but interesting enough to write them down somehow, to somewhat preserve them. In short, I call these forms anecdotes. I usually use them to describe situations taken from real life. I like listening people talking in shops, on public transport, on the street. They happen to say funny, amusing, absurd, unbe- lievable things, I have a keen ear for. Some- times they instil in me. Until I eventually decide to write them down. Besides, there’s a recent
tendency to write sad, serious, depressing po- ems. I’m somewhat opposed to this, because words have power and life brings beautiful mo- ments worth writing as well. The older I get, the more I want to share positive reflections with my readers.
Four years after Freienwill, your bilingual Pol- ish-Lithuanian selection of poems, translat- ed by Birutė Jonuškaitė, was published un- der the title Wolność chmur / Debesų laisvė (Vilnius-Sieradz 2016), which the aforemen- tioned poet and critic Arkadiusz Frania writes about: Maria Duszka’s poems are like splin- ters. Although the vast majority of them are short, they pierce the reader’s sensitive body and fester in their thoughts, stimulat- ing the muscles of the (sub)consciousness. The shorter the texts, the deeper they an- chor, and so, in a beautiful consequence, they instil, they exist (...).
For me personally, these are moments of emo- tions captured in frames, proving enormous “superhuman” sensitivity. Something so close to me. The poems touch upon matters of God (I understand that you are a person of faith), prayer, love, death, separation, and awareness of limited influence on fate. They’re an attempt to freeze important moments in time, the most delicately expressed inner cry. They are invis- ible pearls, genuinely “crying” in their own voice. And one can hear that “sob” between the words. It sinks in...
***
I loved once
I buried this love inside me I am a coffin
Translated by Kalina Duszka
styczeń–marzec 2025 LiryDram 169