Seasonal Plots (III)

Małgorzata Lebda
Translated from the Polish by Mira Rosenthal

The coming of what’s luminous right up to the sideboard; summer; the work of what’s luminous on the skin in the region of the clavicle; redness; separated bones of ice in deep glasses, above all the cold from them; mint; red currant; gooseberries; the falling into sleep in the middle of the day—like a child; the waking like an adult; work; work’s duty; work’s results; work’s fulfilled obligation; work’s smothering debt; smothered vegetables; greengage plums; the closing of the eyelids; the occupying of the mouth—with the body, with a verse; the reading, reading, reading of some poems, out loud; the leaving of a swarm from the hive; bunches of bees; long days; storm forthcoming (bumble-rumble); the belly of the boom; the bellies of the dogs; fear and relief of a touch; the watching of stars at night; fear from the watching of stars at night; oh, what tremendous, vast fear; the impossibility of what is seen; oh yes—above all stars: Deneb, Vega, Altair; cherries picked at midnight from a tree—their abundance, their sharp pits.

 

Pory miejsc (III)

Jasne podchodzące pod kredens; lato; praca jasnego na skórze w okolicy obojczyka; czerwień; rozdzielane do głębokich szkieł kości lodu, nade wszystko chłód z nich; mięta; czerwona porzeczka; agrest; zasypianie w środku dnia — jak dziecko, budzenie się jak dorosły; praca; obowiązek pracy; efekty pracy; spełniony obowiązek pracy; duszący obowiązek pracy; duszone warzywa; renklody; przymykanie powiek; zajmowanie ust — ciałem, wierszem; czytanie wierszy, czytanie wierszy, czytanie wierszy na głos; wychodzenie roju z ula; kiście pszczół; długie dnie; burza (tuż-tuż); brzuch burzy; brzuchy psów; strach i ulga pod dotykiem; patrzenie nocą w gwiazdy; strach od patrzenia nocą w gwiazdy; o, jaki ogromny strach; niemożliwość tego, co zobaczone; rety, tak — gwiazdy, nade wszystko gwiazdy: Deneb, Wega, Altair; wiśnie zbierane północą z drzew — ich obfitość, ich ostre pestki.

Feature Date

Series

  • Translation, What Sparks Poetry

Selected By

Share This Poem

Print This Poem

Black-and-white headshot of Małgorzata Lebda

Małgorzata Lebda is a Polish poet, fiction writer, and ultramarathon runner. She is the author of seven poetry collections, including Mer de Glace which received the prestigious Wisława Szymborska Prize, and Dunaj. Chyłe pola which was awarded the Kościelski Foundation Award. In 2023, Lebda published her prose debut, Łakome (Voracious). The novel has been translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Linden Editions, 2025), and a film adaptation will be released in 2027. Her books have been translated into numerous languages, including English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, Czech, Serbian, Ukrainian, Slovenian, and Danish. She grew up in a hamlet in the Beskid Mountains and still lives in the countryside, sharing her life between the Beskid Mountains and a meadow house in the Suwałki Gap. She is currently working on her second novel.

Black-and-white headshot of Mira Rosenthal

Mira Rosenthal is an American poet and translator of Polish-language writers such as Tomasz Różycki, Małgorzata Lebda and Krystyna Dąbrowska. Her work has received the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and the Found in Translation Award, among other recognitions, and twice has been nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize as well as for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, the National Translation Award, and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. She is the author of Territorial, a Pitt Poetry Series selection, and The Local World, winner of the Wick Poetry Prize. Other honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, two Fulbright Fellowships, and residencies at Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and the Jan Michalski Foundation.

Cover image of the collection under discussion, Mer de Glace

BOOKSHOP

PUBLISHER

Mer de Glace
Fitzcarraldo Editions

London
England

  • Featured book

In 2021, Małgorzata Lebda ran the entire length of the longest river in Poland, the Vistula, from its source in the Beskid Mountains to its mouth at the Baltic Sea—a distance of 1,113 kilometres. She set out to run as a poet, not as an athlete, to use the rhythms of her own body as a means of understanding and connecting to the rhythms of the river’s body of water, under threat of environmental ruin. Mer de Glace, which won the Szymborska Award, is the introduction to her remarkable journey. A profound meditation on the porosity, reactivity and receptivity of both the body and the natural world, the collection reveals their deep interdependence.

"This is ecopoetry at its most profound and informal, challenging and pleasurable."
—Fiona Sampson, Guardian

"Małgorzata Lebda’s poetry never ceases to amaze the reader. Even a chance encounter with it imperceptibly creates an everlasting connection. As eternal as the bond between the frozen sea and the forest."
—Olga Tokarczuk, author of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Poetry Daily Depends on You

With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.

DONATE NOW