Flightless music
Of willow pipes
Flows down the stream…
Kazimierz Burnat, an acclaimed poet and writer from Poland, shares his poetry
Kazimierz Burnat was born in Szczepanowice on the Dunajec River of Poland. He graduated from the University of Wrocław and the University of Economics in Wrocław. He is a poet, essayist, translator of Slavic literature, journalist, literary critic, culture animator. He is author of 23 books of poetry, including 6 reissues and 7 translations from Czech and Ukrainian, and over 60 collective books with translations of works from these languages, including Belarusian, Russian, Slovenian and Hungarian. He edited and provided an afterword or introduction to over 90 different books. He is co-author of approximately 370 anthologies and monographs. He has been awarded with several Ukrainian Literary Awards for translation activity and popularization of Ukrainian literature abroad, as well as for his own literary output and significant contribution to the revival of spirituality and culture of the Ukrainian nation. He received state, ministerial and regional awards, honored with the Silver Medal “For Merit to Culture Gloria Artis”. Winner of the Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz Award (2019), the Marshal of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship Award for outstanding achievements in the field of culture (2022), the Minister of Culture and National Heritage Award for creative achievements (2023) and Shabdaguchha International Poetry Award for significant contribution to world poetry (the U.S./Bangladesh 2023), among others. Honorary Citizen of Polanica-Zdrój. In the years 1995-2004 he was vice-president, and from 2004-2015 president of the Literary Group “Dysonans”; 2006-2011 editor-in-chief of the social and cultural magazine “Bez kurtyny”; 2007-2015 chairman of the Main Court of Peers of the Polish Writers’ Union (ZLP); 2011-2014 vice-president, and since 2015 president of the Lower Silesian Branch of the ZLP in Wrocław. From 2015-2023 he was member of the Presidium of the Main Board of the ZLP—chairman of the Qualification Committee. Member of the European Society of Culture, the Social Council for Culture to the Marshal of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship and the Journalists’ Association of the Republic of Poland.
Rapture
Flightless music
Of willow pipes
Flows down the stream
I reverse its course
To the source
From the vibrating water mirror
I catch the lash of lemna
Of eyes glazed with tears
And count the inwrought stars
The melody caught up in the whirl
Sinks in
Takes wing
Memories regain
The fresh scent of vetch
Entangled in a grains bouquet.
***
Swallow’s Dawning
Wake up
Bells ring in the church
One needs to go experience the word
Then take me where
On chalky paper
You inscribe the content
(What a flame consumes me
From the inside)
I traverse your realms
And trust that my plea
Will be heard –
Nulla dies sine linea!
***
Dilemma
A dream conjured up my Father
Beaming with a Mystery
He returned from the site after fire
Like before
He defined a safe space
Filled the old house with his shadow
Extending my hands
I was experiencing him multidimensionally
Imbibing each memory
For the future
I am with Him in many a place
Simultaneously
If I were to superimpose all maps
Of time and space
The last one would be cerulean blue
How to untangle the mystery of eternity
Turn black into white
Emptiness into fullness
Death into life
***
Forefather’s orchard
Your sunrise
Liberated it from the murkiness
Now in the clearances
It calls still bearing treetops
On the moss-grown trunks
To a burst
While they in plain language
Converse with god
And reconcile by the last
Fruit giving
In return for outliving
On a drooping branch still
Leaves dance
Accompanied by the echo
Of its dreams
The sky sheds tears
(Translated into English by Anna Maria Stepien)
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