Tomasz Różycki 
Translated from the Polish by Mira Rosenthal
I’ve said goodbye to the twentieth century,
its porches choked with bindweed, its wild weeping
and wild grapevines. When finally the black
patrol car leaves, then you can hear the panting

of the train, the horses snorting, sweat steaming
in icy air. Nervous, you wonder what might be worth
taking for good: a useless notebook, minor
snapshots, cheap religious medals? Forests and cities

along the way sleep like huge dark churches.
I’ll not be coming back here, windows draped
with dirty towels, signs of widespread plague.
Below the sand, I’ve hidden a handful of words

not yet infected. For you. I put the rest outside
along with the still warm body to see how these times
will take care of it at night. What shape this era will carve
in the flesh, what will be left when morning arrives.
from the book TO THE LETTER / Archipelago Books
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"'Palestine in Arabic is Always Alive': Fady Joudah’s [. . .]"

"Nearly every poem is titled “[. . .],” introducing a pause before the poem’s transmission comes through—a pause that might also create the theatrical illusion that the poem is being transmitted from Arabic into English. This inclination toward mirroring is reflected in the habitual signature of Joudah’s volume, chiasmus, a term referring to a mirrored syntax in a line of poetry."

via WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS
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Cover image of Poetry Magazine, December 2023, in which this translation first appeared
What Sparks Poetry:
Daniela Danz on [Come wilderness into our homes] 

"With our ever-increasing distance from nature, alongside our excessive extractive practices, the idea of wilderness has become a topos of longing; nevertheless, wilderness still harbors the potential to undo the cultural achievements that are the basis of human civilization. Prior to the Enlightenment, European thought regarded wilderness as a threat, if also a source of fascination; in the Enlightenment’s wake, wilderness was rebranded as an Edenic original condition."
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