Winter, 2017. I trudge through
a white crystal crust to feed the birds
black sunflower seeds and suet.
My reading chair in the garden by the
rosebush and hibiscus is soft with snow.
Last summer when I read there,
the roses were in full blood bloom.
The hibiscus in flagrant stamen thrust,
did not attempt to hide its lust.
Beyond the fecund pages of my book,
birds flit, dart, and land at the feeder,
bees do their anther dance within the bloom.
Like bee and bird, I flit, dart, and dance
among translations of these generative poems.
I gather pollen from 20th century Polish poets;
Milosz, Herbert, Rozewicz, and Szymborska,
giving voice to Europe’s self-wounding war.
Now in this winter of my discontent
I look out at the snowdrift on my chair,
remembering the pollinating poems
of these four war-tempered Slavic poets
I first devoured in warm weather there.
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Zbigniew Herbert 1924-1998
Czeslaw Milosz 1911-2004 Nobel Prize in Literature 1980
Wislawa Szymborska 1923-2012 Nobel Prize in Literature 1996
Tadeusz Rozewicz 1921-2014