Philosopher’s Stone
Wish to introduce work of another Polish Poet & Author Tadeusz Rozewicz (1921 – Present) who writes with the unabated intensity, a talkative tenseness built into his struggle with language as art.
He is a seeker of new forms in poetic expression that abandon the avant-garde for aesthetic straightforwardness and the stunning short-cuts that are a metaphor for a human existence bounded by the act of birth and the act of death. “Yes, that is all there is,” reads one of his verses on the fragility of existence.
PHILOSOPHER’S STONE
This poem
should be put to sleep
before it starts
to philosophize
before it stars
to cast about
for compliments
summoned to life
in a forgetful moment
attuned to words
to glances
it seeks deliverance
from the philosopher’s
stone
passerby walk on
don’t lift the stone
under it a tiny white poem
naked
is turning
to ash
From New Poems, by Tadeusz Różewicz,
© Translated by Bill Johnston – Archipelago Books