Malgorzata Lebda
trans. by Mira Rosenthal
Five POEMS
Feeding the Dogs
Mornings here in the damp valley are good, the end of the world
that remains seldom comes to mind, since there are more
important things: take euthyrox straight away, get a quarter
doxybactin in the muzzle of the cat. And also: feed the dogs,
tell the dogs your dream, take the dogs for a walk.
Mornings here are good, serene, reaching out to the dusk.
From the Body: One
Today it was obedient. Before setting off on a run, its memory
must be jogged about the route, the gravel, the roots, the arteries
of the earth. If the path cuts through the forest, it obeys.
After several hours, as promised, I cool it off in the stream
just below the house. A woman with a boy in her arms
points me out from the road and says: Oh, look
over there, a lady, she’s walking into the cold, brrrr.
The boy apes: brrrr.
Canopy
We cast white shafts from our headlamps into the crowns
of the trees. Tender branches of Acacia, then silver aspen.
After midnight, awakened by a caterwaul, I can’t stop
thinking about the night rising up behind us as we descended
into the valley with the light; that time to time, looking back,
we shone straight down dusk’s throat.
From Bärfuss
At an animal rights event, a panelist admits she feeds her dogs
on meat. Why do koalas spring to mind? Bärfuss states
that females of the species sometimes lose their young
who slip out of the belly pouch when the mother is consumed
with gorging on eucalyptus
Also the thought of what a poem—as some say
—should and shouldn’t do. What kind of snout it has
and how it opens.
Fuchsia
The last house in town appears bright. A woman stacks
the dishes, cracks a window, sits on the sill, lights up,
looks out, catches sight of my body in outline (it must be
strong against the shiny road), raises a hand, as do I in reply.
Entering the woods, I wonder who she thought she recognized
in me. The sounds of animals sharpen the night. The hornbeams
bow down, bow down. Returning, I notice the lights are higher
where she moved them from the ground floor to the attic.
I know a good deal about her: smoking, she tilts her head
and leans on the frame, she cares about diffuse light
for the fuchsia, chose to hang it in an eastern facing spot.
She’s discerning. She sits down to dinner alone.
Małgorzata Lebda (she/her) is a poet, ultramarathon runner, photographer, and lover of rivers. She is the author of six poetry collections and the novel Łakome (Znak, 2023). Her honors include the Gdynia Literary Prize and the Wisława Szymborska Poetry Award. She grew up in Żelaźnikowa Wielka, a small village in the Beskid mountains in southern Poland.
Mira Rosenthal’s (she/her) translations of Polish poetry include Krystyna Dąbrowska’s Tideline (Zephyr, 2022) and Tomasz Różycki’s Colonies (Zephyr, 2013). Her honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a PEN/Heim Translation Grant, two Fulbright Fellowships, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. She is the author of the poetry collections Territorial (Pitt Poetry Series, 2022) and The Local World (Kent State University Press, 2011). Her website is www.mirarosenthal.com.