Poezja w ciepłym ujęciu obcego akcentu...
Utwory z tomu Proscenium prezentuje Ott Toomet, który jest synem Jaana Kaplinskiego światowej sławy estońskiego pisarza polskiego pochodzenia.
Estonia, Viinistu.

Summer in Seaford

The sun sheds its golden drops.
The sea devours them instantly.
The sky shimmers.

The day is snatched from another story.
We’re arriving, here at the end of the line.
We convince ourselves that infinite space is an illusion…

We walk through the small English town.
A tiny station, plaster falling unevenly off the wooden beams.
Before us the Channel gleams threateningly.

In the distance a cliff plunges sharply into the sea.
No chips, no ice cream, no candy floss.
Dead jellyfish glitter on the pebbles.
The day passes lazily by
A ship silhouetted in grey against its face.

On the beach a couple unfold deckchairs
Wrinkled skin
They read the papers.
They seem unreal
Postimpressionist faces
All nonchalant

We’re heading back.
The cafes and restaurants are closed.
Who lives here at the end of the world?

Looking through photographs of the scandalous Bloomsbury set,
An old snapshot.
A gaunt young woman and a man in deckchairs.
They are reading the papers.

What if the woman on the beach was a cousin of Virginia Woolf's?
Who was the man?
A poet?
Or one of her scandalous friends?

Anna Maria Mickiewicz
London

A grey coat

In a grey coat, leaning on a bench, collecting dispersed thoughts,
Nietzsche was terrifying once, with remote grandeur.
Power overcomes weakness.

Now it is just a Dionysian fairy tale on the glowing screen.
A silhouette darkened by fog will leave a mark in the flame of memory.
Power overcome by weakness.

Anna Maria Mickiewicz

They were not the ones

They were not the ones
Who ordered the trees to be silent
Who gagged the spring birds
They stand in the glow of the rising sun
Worrying about what will happen

Anna Maria Mickiewicz
Poland 1981


Another Alexandra Palace spring

In the distance, the city rumbles.

Pounding empty streets.

Shards of the day.


There, the mere illusion of light.

Here, spring brings the sun,

Sweeping away the puddles.

Streams sparkle, hiding in droplets of water.

Mistily entranced

We embrace.

Anna Maria Mickiewicz,
Translated by: Tom Wachtel
London, March 2011

“An Angel in London”


I have seen a Polish angel
He was selling carrots, tomatoes and strawberries
Blue-eyed
A bright face
Surrounded by whiteness
But only his wing was a bit chipped
He lifted his pale eyelids
Lost in languages
He was stammering…
I dropped my head
How can it be…
So young
A Polish Nike lost in London