Anna Swirszczynska Poems

A night of love
exquisite as a
concert from old Venice
played on exquisite instruments.
...

The old man
leaves his house, carries books.
A German soldier snatches his books
flings them in the mud.
...

Walking to your place for a love fest
I saw at a street corner
an old beggar women.
I took her hand,
...

Cuddling in the arms her half-asphyxiated baby, howling,
she ran up the staircase of the apartment building that was set ablaze.
From the first floor to the second.
From the second to the third.
...

You will not tame this sea
either by humility or rapture.
But you can laugh
in its face.
...

She is sixty. She lives
the greatest love of her life.

She walks arm-in-arm with her dear one,
...

She was an evil stepmother.
In her old age she is slowly dying
in an empty hovel.
...

Our embrace lasted too long.
We loved right down to the bone.
I hear the bones grind, I see
our two skeletons.
...

There are moments
when I feel more clearly than ever
that I am in the company
of my own person.
...

Happy as something unimportant
and free as a thing unimportant.
As something no one prizes
and which does not prize itself.
...