Peter Skrzynecki

Peter Skrzynecki Poems

My gentle father
Kept pace only with the Joneses
Of his own mind's making -
Loved his garden like an only child,
...

1949


1
Tired, embittered,
wary of each other—
like men whose death sentences
have been commuted,
...

1
Many slept on deck
Because of the day's heat
Or to watch a sunset
...

My thoughts walked ahead of me
and nothing was spoken
the whole time — almost
as if the elements had requested
...

He has grown tired
of the clichéd
pronunciation of his name—
countering
...

The men would often go hunting rabbits
in the countryside around the hostel—
with guns and traps and children following
in the sunlight of afternoon paddocks:
marvelling in their native tongues
at the scent of eucalypts all around.

We never asked where the guns came from
or what was done with them later:
as each rifle's echo cracked through the hills
and a rabbit would leap as if jerked
on a wire through the air—
or, watching hands release a trap
then listening to a neck being broken.

Later, I could never bring myself
to watch the animals being skinned
and gutted—
excitedly
talking about the ones that escaped
and how white tails bobbed among brown tussocks.
For days afterwards
our rooms smelt of blood and fur
as the meat was cooked in pots
over a kerosene primus.

But eat I did, and asked for more,
as I learnt about the meaning of rations
and the length of queues in dining halls—
as well as the names of trees
from the surrounding hills that always seemed
to be flowering with wattles:
growing less and less frightened by gunshots
and what the smell of gunpowder meant—
quickly learning to walk and keep up with men
who strode through strange hills
as if their migration had still not come to an end.
...

He rode the red dust roads as a kid
in a billycart built from a fruitbox
along with other kids like himself
who lived on hope and laughter—
...

I must be less
than eighteen months old—
naked, in my mother's arms,
face pressed against hers
...

for Gillian Mears

In Basho's house
there are no walls,
no roof, floors
or pathway—
nothing to show
...

Impossible not to see them
once you cross the railway bridge
and enter Memorial Avenue—
the rows of red trees
along the cemetery's perimeter:
...

My father's "Arbeitskarte"
or Work Card
is the only surviving document
that I have
...

1

For many years
after arriving in Australia
my father repaired our shoes himself—
...

I wonder what my parents
would say knowing
my poems and short stories
...

It was the mountain
I was always going to climb —
Swore that heat would not tire me,
Flowers and snakes could not
...

Week after week
we've met as friends or strangers
and talked about
writing poetry -
tried to finish off
a line or more
in the small tutorial room
or on the steps of the quadrangle:

meeting and sharing the same air,
same sunlight, wind
or whatever the weather might be -

mindful of the hour's brevity
and where our lives
have to be when it's over:

in a car, a train,
walking away -
travelling through private dreams:

remembering, perhaps, the fringed pond
in the field below
the quadrangle steps,
bulrushes and swallows among trees -

or the little track winding skywards
through the grass
to the highway and beyond the hills,

connecting where we're at
and where we're hoping to be -

sometimes with such difficulty,
at other times with such puzzling ease.
...

Even words are tinged with autumn
before they drift
over the brown stream's crest -
falling at Gostwyck from a haze
...

"Life as nowhere else and a people apart."
- Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead


Transferred from Haematology
...

Death speaks softly
like an old friend that visits
without giving notice—
that enters the house
without first knocking
or waiting to be asked in.

The voice that calls out
is that of a young girl
who asks Death to go away—
she pleads her youth,
calls Death "the dear one"
and speaks against being touched.

Death continues to speak
lovingly and tells her
not to be afraid—
that Death will comfort her,
give courage
and promises she will sleep:

after all, Death is the old friend
to whom the door
was always left open—
trustworthy, reliable, punctual.
A violin's notes stab the air sharply
Death speaks for the last time.
...

The gate is heavy as lead;
its rusty hinges creak
as we respectfully enter
the cemetery at Glencree
created by a secluded cliff-face
...

Running late, arriving just in time,
shaking two or three hands
and taking a seat in the back row—
trying to regain breath
...

Peter Skrzynecki Biography

Peter Skrzynecki was born in Germany to Polish forced-labourers in the last days of Word War 2. He emigrated to Australia with his parents in 1949. He has published eight books of poetry, including Immigrant Chronicle (1975), Night Swim (1989), Easter Sunday ( 1993) and Times Revenge (1999). He is also the author of two novels, Beloved Mountain and The Cry of the Goldfinch; and two collections of short stories, The Wild Dogs and Rock ‘n’ Roll Heroes.)

The Best Poem Of Peter Skrzynecki

Feliks Skrzynecki

My gentle father
Kept pace only with the Joneses
Of his own mind's making -
Loved his garden like an only child,
Spent years walking its perimeter
From sunrise to sleep.
Alert, brisk and silent,
He swept its paths
Ten times around the world.

Hands darkened
From cement, fingers with cracks
Like the sods he broke,
I often wondered how he existed
On five or six hours' sleep each night -
Why his arms didn't fall off
From the soil he turned
And tobacco he rolled.

His Polish friends
Always shook hands too violently,
I thought… Feliks Skrzynecki,
That formal address
I never got used to.
Talking, they reminisced
About farms where paddocks flowered
With corn and wheat,
Horses they bred, pigs
They were skilled in slaughtering.
Five years of forced labour in Germany
Did not dull the softness of his blue eyes

I never once heard
Him complain of work, the weather
Or pain. When twice
They dug cancer out of his foot,
His comment was: ‘but I'm alive'.

Growing older, I
Remember words he taught me,
Remnants of a language
I inherited unknowingly -
The curse that damned
A crew-cut, grey-haired
Department clerk
Who asked me in dancing-bear grunts:
‘Did your father ever attempt to learn English?'

On the back steps of his house,
Bordered by golden cypress,
Lawns - geraniums younger
Than both parents,
My father sits out the evening
With his dog, smoking,
Watching stars and street lights come on,
Happy as I have never been.

At thirteen,
Stumbling over tenses in Caesar's Gallic War,
I forgot my first Polish word.
He repeated it so I never forgot.
After that, like a dumb prophet,
Watched me pegging my tents
Further and further south of Hadrian's Wall.

Peter Skrzynecki Comments

osama 21 March 2022

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH FAGGOT

1 0 Reply
ssss 05 April 2022

a little gay boy: 3

1 0
peedro 06 May 2021

ive seen better poejms on pornhub

8 2 Reply
osama 21 March 2022

facts

0 0
carlos 09 December 2020

i am still at the shops and my mother has passed out and the ambo isn't coming and its getting wet please help me my wet dog in the bag is losing eye site and there is no way im gonna get this chilled icecream in the fridge before it melts

2 0 Reply
Lololololol 10 August 2020

This is an embedded html element and I love it

3 1 Reply
Mackenna 02 April 2019

I have read his poem called the Migrant Hostel and I love it.

4 3 Reply

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