Friday, September 09, 2005

Poetry without borders

Words without Borders this month is all poetry, of all shapes and sizes.

In the "Polish corner," work never before seen in English:

Look

The blue winter sky like a stone on which angels
sublime and quite unearthly sharpen their wings
moving on rungs of radiance on crags of shadow
they gradually sink into the imaginary heavens
but in another moment they emerge even paler
on the other side of the sky the eye's other side
Don't say that it's not true there aren't any angels
you immersed in the pool of your indolent body
you who see everything through your eye's color
and stand sated with world — at your lashes' edge

Zbigniew Herbert
(translated from the Polish by Alissa Valles)

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