Psalm III

Julia Fiedorczuk
Translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston

in what language should I speak to you, sun
so you’ll rise tomorrow for my child, so you’ll
rise and stimulate the growth of our food,

                                                                                           circulation,

how should I sing it for my child
how should I sing to you, planet, so you’ll forgive me
for giving birth to appetite, for giving birth

                                                                                               to a question

hooked onto nothing, how can I win
the generosity of the creator-bacteria
how can I win clean rain air glucose

                                                                                               la la

so we’ll lie down and fall asleep, so we’ll wake up
so we’ll lie down and fall asleep, so we’ll wake up,
gravitation:

                                                                           tfi
                                                                                                lala

so you’ll lie us down and fall us asleep, and wake us—

 

Psalm III

w jakim języku mam do ciebie mówić, słońce
żebyś jutro wstało dla mojego dziecka żebyś
wstało i pobudziło tkanki pokarmów
                                                                                               krążenie

jak mam to zaśpiewać dla mojego dziecka
jak mam tobie śpiewać planeto żebyś wybaczyła
że urodziłam głód, że urodziłam

                                                                                               pytanie

zaczepione o nic, jak sobie zaskarbić
szczodrobliwość stworzycielek-bakterii
czysty deszcz powietrze glukozę

                                                                                               la la

że ułożymy się i zaśniemy, że się obudzimy
że ułożymy się i zaśniemy, że się obudzimy
grawitacjo:

                                                                            tfi

                                                                                               la la

że nas ułożysz i zaśniesz, i że nas obudzisz—

What Keeps Us

Poems to Read in Community

Inspired by C. D. Wright’s poem “What Keeps,” we offer Julia Fiedorczuk’s “Psalm III,” translated from the  Polish by Bill Johnston, as part of a twenty-poem selection from poems we’ve featured in 2024—poems, like bread, that one might pass across the table—to a loved one, or to oneself. 

Read editor Lloyd Wallace’s introduction to the collection and statements from our staff readers here. Read poems by selecting below.

What Keeps

Some nights We stay up
passing it back and
forth
between us
drinking deep

Read >

This Era

Forests and cities

along the way sleep like huge dark churches.

Read >

Talisman

each of us bearing the art
in a curve of wing, a small motif
of feather,

Read >

Rewind

Have you ever seen something that buzzes inside you?
I am watching two kids encounter each other

Read >

Rationale

Because she still won’t sleep alone, you sleep deeply
with her small warm body wrapped in your arms.

Read >

Pupusas

no, the pupusa is a portrait
            of this life, crusting & breaking
                        with every lick & tooth

Read >

Psalm III

in what language should I speak to you, sun
so you’ll rise tomorrow for my child, so you’ll
rise and stimulate the growth of our food,

Read >

Night Song

You’ll never know
what became of me
in the dark, how
my body opened,

Read >

Handfuls

Summer is a pure lone mountain.
Somehow, a winter flowers against an enormous blue loneliness

Read >

Eurydice

It snowed the day I died, a freak spring storm.
(It was in the papers.)

Read >

December

Instead of snow, a dark pouring rain
to dodge as passersby reject us.  No spruces, but sycamores with their white cankers.

Read >

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Julia Fiedorczuk is one of Poland’s leading poets. She was awarded the 2018 Szymborska Prize, Poland’s most prestigious poetry award, for Psalmy (Psalms), and has received many other honors, including the Hubert Burda Prize and the Polish Association of Book Publishers award for best debut. She has published six volumes of poetry, two novels, a collection of short stories, and three critical books. She is a professor of American studies at Warsaw University. Her work, both creative and academic, focuses on the relationship between humans and their more-than-human environments. Her poems have been translated into many languages, including Swedish, Spanish, Ukrainian, Serbian, and English. A collection of her poetry titled Oxygen, in Bill Johnston’s translation, was published by Zephyr Books in 2017. Fiedorczuk has translated the poetry of numerous American poets, including Wallace Stevens, Laura Riding, and Forrest Gander.

Headshot of translator Bill Johnston

Bill Johnston is a literary translator working from Polish and French. His translation of Julia Fiedorczuk’s 2017 poetry book Psalms was runner up for the inaugural Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation, and was published in November 2023 by the University of Wisconsin Press. His other awards include the PEN Translation Prize, the Best Translated Book Award (with Wiesław Myśliwski), and the National Translation Award in Poetry. He teaches literary translation at Indiana University.

Cover of the book "Psalms"

Madison, Wisconsin

“Fiedorczuk is, deservingly, an international literary star who writes distinctively across genres. In this innovative, formally restless collection, the divine and bacterial, children and rivers, war and eros mix—kaleidoscopically—in unsettling poems that serve as hymns to the sacrality of life—all life, even the life of rocks. Somehow, I don’t know how, Johnston’s translation catches the music, the vowel rhyme, the staggered, restless phrasings of the originals, and Fiedorczuk’s poignant, broken tones of supplication and gratitude.”
—Forrest Gander, judge of the Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation and author of Twice Alive

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