Grzegorz Wróblewski

Three poems

Tangerines

Savouring spring water
I look with pride at Spanish
dried-up tangerines.

Cringing in fear they took shelter
in a basket full of empty bottles.
I lord over their brief lives.

I spared them. As someone
forgot about me.


Argument from Enghave Station

Enghave Station. On the platform a weary
dwarf and his massive, ancient
valise. A muscled mastiff drools
at the sight of a white pigeon… That
is why you must eat your cereal—says
father to six-year-old Claus.


I put off the knife from my hand till tomorrow

Blood can wait
Blood will cool yet
From January till the month called December
I put off the knife from my hand till tomorrow
And in the black box corpuscles seethe
and whine to be let out for my end.
Naturally the cunts don’t want
don’t want to for my decay

I put off the knife from my hand till tomorrow
Blood can wait
Blood will cool yet.
But can you do that to blood?

Translated by Tadeusz Pióro.

Grzegorz Wróblewski
photo by Janusz Tyrpak

Grzegorz Wróblewski was born in 1962 in Gdansk and grew up in Warsaw, Poland. He has lived in Copenhagen for the last twenty years. He has published seven volumes of poetry and a collection of short prose pieces in Poland, two books of poetry, a book of poetic prose and an experimental novel (translations) in Denmark, and selected poems in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Mostar 2002). He is also the author of several plays. His work has been translated into five languages. English translations of his poems have appeared in London Magazine, Poetry London, Magma Poetry, Parameter Magazine, Chicago Review, 3rd bed, Eclectica, Mississippi Review, and in anthologies: Altered State: The New Polish Poetry (Arc Publications, Todmorden, UK 2003), Carnivorous Boy Carnivorous Bird (Zephyr Press, Brookline, USA 2004).