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or building walls, but open to dialogue and reconciliation, even with the descendants of those who invaded this homeland in the past and committed crimes against its inhabitants. on the first of September in Schleswig / I am reading to German poets / a lyric about my Grandfather / who died in Gross-Rosen / we are striving to heal our past / we are sharing a wafer of poem / from mouth to mouth 11 [...] With this beautiful metaphor, the poet shows us the meaning and power of poetry. In this case, it has become a bridge between a descendant of the victim and descendants of the perpetra- tors. There are several texts about poetry and poets in this volume, but there’s still hunger for more. The following one is particularly beauti- ful: poems come to me / whenever they want // sometimes they wake me up / and sometimes / they lull me to sleep 12
This is the essence of Maria Duszka’s poetics – it’s both dramatic and soothing. The poet shows us the darkness and light of this world in a way the scales do not tip towards evil. In this view and description of reality, she’s very close to me. In his Dziennik pocieszenia, Wojciech Bonow- icz quotes a poem by Ron Padgett:
Najpierw uspokój się. / Potem – spróbuj pozos- tać w tym stanie / przez resztę życia.
First, calm down. / Next, stay that way / for the rest of your life.
The poems in Hanami are those of someone who has reached this state. I invite you to con- template the world through Duszka’s eyes.
Reprint of a review published in“Kalejdoskop”, No. 7-8/2024.
Translated by Agnieszka Rezanow-Stöcker
Fragments of poems translated by: 1 – Agnieszka Jankowska; 2,3,6,10,11 – Tomasz Jarmołkiewicz; 4, 7 – Ela Kotkowska; 5, 8, 9, 12 – Kalina Duszka
188 LiryDram styczeń–marzec 2025
Clouds
Like Human
Thoughts
in Poetry
of Maria Duszka
Marcin Szyndrowski
In Maria Duszka’s poetry, clouds are tru- ly free. Not only meteorologically unpre- dictable, changeable, present yet untoucha-
ble – but also in the sense of inner, the most difficult human freedom, because it is sub- tle, whispered in undertone. In the Wolność chmur / Debesų laisvė volume – translated into Lithuanian by the outstanding Birutė Jonuškaitė, translator of Szymborska and Miłosz – we encounter Duszka as we know her from earlier volumes, but somehow sub- dued, more contemplative, invariably sensi- tive to the details of everyday life.
This is poetry that must be savoured as slow- ly as the morning light in the window or the smell of rain after a heatwave. What’s the “freedom of clouds”? It’s precisely this elu- siveness that needs no declaration. Clouds do not have to prove anything – they’re there, they disappear, they return. They move