Apropos of the previous post, I thought it might be useful to present the culprit poem that so outraged the target of my anti-review. The following is Bill Johnston’s fluid version from the volume Tadeusz Różewicz: New Poems, for which he received the 2008 Found in Translation Award.
THE WEEPING SUPERPOWER
(Saturday January 20 2001)
I’m reading Norwid
Across the mobile surfaces of the Sea
A song like a seagull, Jan, to you I send…Long will it fly to the homeland of the free—
Doubting the land will still be there to find?*I’m at a writers’ retreat in Konstancin
I’m talking with Kapuściński
about Franek Gil
about globalization
we drink wine
I speak of population growth
he of water shortages
not oil but water
not water
but water shortages will be the cause
of future wars says Ryszard
blood will be spilled for water
not for homeland honor and godit’s gotten late
I hear that far away
in Washington sleet is falling
it’s cold lousy weather
the 43rd president of the Superpower
is being sworn in
there’s a 21-gun salute at the CapitolThe superpower is sentimental
tender-hearted sensitive
(“mitfűhlender Konservatismus”)
tearful
the “compassionate conservative”
places his hand on the bible
he’s the son of the 41st presidentAbraham Lincoln watches and listens
even the sleet was unable
to conceal Bush’s tears of emotion
the superpower was weepingthe president’s wife Laura wept
his twin daughters wept
the president’s parents
former president George Bush
and his wife—Grandma Barbara—were weeping
those who voted for gore wept
after making sloppy holes
in their ballot papers
so the holes had to be recounted
the outgoing president Bill Clinton
wept his wife Hillary wept
(she wept but she took chairs
and an armchair she wept but she took a table
and curtains and some other things
… though she gave them back) their daughter
Chelsea was weeping Madeleine wiped her eyes
as she stood there in her miniskirt
with a rose pinned to her bosom
Bronek wept too
(though for different reasons)
the former national
security advisor
Sandy Berter
“kept reaching for his handkerchief”
the sky was weeping
vice-president Dick Cheney
wept as the 43rd president
put his own overcoat round him
to protect him from the rain…
(the “compassionate conservative”)
then raised his own collar
(to keep the rain from trickling down his neck)a small unknown intern
wept as did her mother
who was left with a stained dress
in the closet
“my daughter, my little girl:…
what have you done?!
then there was a grand ball
made of a hundred balls
oh! what a ball it was
the gentlemen were required (?) to wear tails
and cowboy boots
or a tuxedo
and cowboy bootstop hat stetston and cowboy boots
then there was a banquet
seven thousand pounds of beef were consumed
(the old world will feel the effects in a few years
or a few days)
five and a half thousand pounds of ham
(this bodes no good either)
sixty thousand giant shrimpthe former president once again
bid farewell to the nation
once again apologized
to the district attorney and the nation
that he had lied that he had put his finger
where he shouldn’t have
the finger from the atomic button
(don’t put your finger in the door!)
he promised he’d give back the chairs
and flew offthe sky wept the earth wept
the lands and oceans trembled
diplomats and generals
wiped their noses
(the cardinals smiled)I wept too
as I read the papers
then I laughed through my tears
as I listened to the radio
Perhaps you, too, dear Perpetual Birder, have a constitution as delicate as the reviewer discussed in my anti-review, and so feel “revulsion” at reading this poem. But it’s not you constitution, or his, or mine, that worries me; it’s the Constitution for which (I’m guessing) the poet weeps.
____________
* These italicized lines from Norwid hint at a weakness in Johnston’s version: “Jan” may be “John” in Polish, but English readers would be hard pressed to connect “Jan” with “John Brown,” whom Norwid addresses in his poem. It seems as if the new translation by Joanna Trzeciak seems to have clarified that reference, both within the poem and through an end note—something that will help English readers understand the Lincoln reference. Maybe her version will also clue us in as to who Franek Gil and Bronek are!
Most of the earth's population seems to have climbed aboard the U.S.of A's free-fall ride to nowhere.