WHAT IS IT TO BE A POET AND WHY,

I never ask these questions to myself,
it flows out from the spring within my soul
forging the choices of my life,
my stance in the world,
expressing myself through the word
and through silence
with beauty and humanism.

THE WIFE OF LOT

For her disobedience,
for abandoning the path of submission
and that of the figure of justice
who grants everything to those who
for feeling this steps
and hurls wrath
on those who abandon it,
for defending her dream
which is but a moment of eternity,
because it will be her experience
and this neither God nor Death
can snatch away.

SUCH A PRESSING QUESTION

produced eloquence silences
which drained out all
signs of togetherness.
How to live?

It was created ingenuously 
seized by and invisible hand,
in a snare of absurdities,

while reasoning surrendered
to emptiness and a stupidity,
insensitive to hurt.

From the windowsill, Wislawa contemplated
the helplessness of the defenseless
in Kraków in the year nineteen eighty-six.

PERPETUAL FEAR

We should be afraid
of  the fears
that control and divide us,

that paralyze the energy
to combat
the greed of the elite,

of cynicism which disguises
their prevalent opulence
as a sign of security.

We should be afraid
of not daring ourselves
to desire a worthy life.

IN DOGMATIC REGIMES

self-criticism is a suicide,
because there will always be enlightened men
more dogmatic who will accuse one
of being a revisionist or a traitor,
demanding his death for being
an enemy of for ideological detachment.