My father was stabbed somewhere.
They beat up, they pushed
With sticks, hoes
bleeding through the ice...
We forgot everything. – says Wyspianski. He's talking to us, and as much as it was a 100 years ago, it hurts like yesterday. It hurts, due to the fact that then they besides "pushed" and "beated" and besides "glow" and "stabbed" and we forgot everything. 5 years ago, the 2010 Solidarity Association published a volume of poetic “Smolensk Anthology”. It's been half a decade and I'm holding the second edition of this anthology. So not everyone has forgotten!
Happy is the nation that has its Homer. With all the ailments of past that affect Poland, we can thank Providence for 1 thing – for poets. “There are bills of harm in the country,” and surely no hand will cross them, neither a alien nor his own. Broniewski was right, although the quoted words afraid something else, but they are in rule right. Because, just like Katyn needed a song to realize it, so the song needs a sister Smolensk.
Maybe not from the first hours, but surely immediately after April 10, 2010, I started collecting all the information, comments and material about it in the “szauflad”, which I gave the name MGŁA. 10 years later, there's quite a few it. Interestingly, the further distant from that tragedy, the more in my literature drawer. due to the fact that erstwhile fact becomes a victim of politics, poesy is the only light.
The poet remembers
Oh, how ominous present is this phrase by Miłosz about "the memory of the poet". People wearing masks, gloves and their fear are forced to media all day to think only of their ‘health’, ‘security’. A position further than going to the next buying is hard to imagine, and the past then appears as unnecessary ballast and irresponsible beauty. but that's not true. This proves to us the time of Lent and the time of the Lord's Passion inscribed in the foundations of Polish culture, after which comes the time of Resurrection. The destiny of the world, and besides of our nation, will not be decided by the “eaters of bread” who – as Slovak wants – request to be “reworked in angels” but by those who “fly over the levels”, which is most beautiful defined by Mickiewicz.
Both “Smolensk Anthologies” – the 2015 and 2020 ones – opens the motto just taken out of Adam’s forerunner; this well-known verse from the 3rd part of “Dziads”: “If I forget them, you God in heaven forget me.” That's right. To both volumes the introductory word was written by Prof. Andrzej Nowak, and in both we will find a full list of victims of this tragedy, which was expressed by Fr Stanisław Małkowski in 1 very crucial sentence: "I pray that from these Smolensk deaths in the service of truth, memory and hope good will grow out of the power of the cross."
Oh, it is not easy to pray a speech tied in specified a field of death, among the thousands of crumbs of Poland scattered in the Smolensk forest. And the first and second time editors of these books decided symbolically to include 96 poems – as many as there were airplane passengers who were going to visit Katyn death pits. So we have in both volumes almost 200 verses signed by almost 1 100 authors placed in alphabetical order. There are names that are widely known and that many of us may not know, at least immediately. It is not easy to read and not only due to the variety of poetics, and so the necessity to control your reception apparatus to a different formal transmission each time. The difficulty is that by turning over the pages of this book/book, we realize that this is simply a walk in the cemetery. You can't run here. all tombstone has something to say. all inscription needs to be read to the end, or possibly even read twice.
Smolenian pandemic
In this year's volume I find words and sentences that would like to shout at all Poland. But how do we convince those on whom it depends, that at least a fewer minutes should be given to people who have been killed by another virus, 1 who has never claimed to the crown, or whose structure and content someway do not want to work on institutes and laboratories. Yet this virus is deadly to all lie and contagious even after death. All the more reason to invitation you to a cemetery walk down the alley that leads to the light. I propose we halt on this road all now and then.
Difficult
close this list
and leave the forest... fog again
And you gotta tell the fact again. [Warciech Banach, Annex]
We're tired of beginning wounds.
And apologizing to those to whom we showed our heart.
And do we gotta rebuild the country on lies? ... [Mark Baterovich, Motherland has...]
... Behind the fog
was the forest of suffering and truth [Teresa Boguszewska, Fog]
... Cleaned in a hurry,
Cleaned in anger -
Like those unwanted flowers,
These candles--
They were meant to infect with the flame of love. [Ewa Credo / Zuzanna Stec, present for the First Lady]
Even if it were an accident
This assassination was an accident.
He'll inactive be an attack.
For our imagination
To the right of doubt
To analyse the truth
Freedom of conscience [Andrzej Tadeusz Kiiowski, Zamach]
... In the air of a sticky lie
On a earth of blood
We're inactive looking for your crumbs.
Looking at the planet through tears [Andrzej Kołakowski, Krakowskie Przedmieście 2010]
... You didn't realize and you won't understand:
suffering – contempt, sad – venom.
Not in a war, like a war.
April 10th... No dates. [Barbara Lipińska- Attitude, After 10 years]
They broke the chessboard.
They made wax figures.
And here he stands before us.
panopticum of temporality [Maria Dorota Pieńkowska, Aviation Day]
... God Honor the Homeland
around
black widows
and flags to half
Mr. President!
The larum is playing!
Motherland in need!
And you
We [Rishard Smagacz, Triptych Katyński]
We chained you to the armor of the votive gutters.
We gave the sword in hand and the shield with the arms...
But you're not at war, though your face is darker
From those disasters which cannot be understood [Wojciech Wencel, parent of God Smolensk]
I died as I lived,
on the way to Katyń,
I didn't want to die,
I just wanted to,
so the others know where they come from.
and where they are going... [Mirosław Wozniak, Testament]
What am I talking about with this virus, individual gonna ask? For freedom, for Poland, for God – I will answer. That it was besides pathetic? How else can you talk about what you love? Already in May, 10 years ago, Jan Pietrzak wrote and what was recorded in the first volume of anthology:
Smolensk ballad ends slowly...
We inactive don't know the truth, so there's no moral.
Everyone has to sing a message.
Depends on what happens to Poland!
The origin is inactive beating
I know that this 2010 Solidarity work is only 1,000 copies. Or is it not “only” and “until”? How many Spartans defended the celebrated gulf and the Court – these Polish Thermopile? And if individual does not like calling for “winners,” then let him go with the gorge of Somosierra or stand on the walls of Czestochowa. A 1000 is simply a lot. Because, following Jack Kaczmarski's verses about Katyn, Jack, who died besides early to write/sing about Smolensk:
... possibly they were all sick.
same over the neck circular injuries
Through whom God’s gift sailed to earth
But there are no signs that this is the grave of plague
So let us appeal to another of his lyrics, which – so I perceive it – describes our sick and indifferent planet with these words:
And there are places in the sludge where the water almost froze under the scythe of dirty green;
There the trace, sooner than the 1 who left it, disappears – invisible swamps are snares (...)
And then, from this filth, from these swamps, this large Polish poet slow brings us to the light:
But the origin is inactive beating, pressing a pulse between the slopes,
So there's a stream, though hidden for the eye!
Nothing, it seems to be Kaczmarski. Nothing that ‘heavens can barely be seen’ is nothing that ‘a cool and dark puddle’, for what if ‘the avalanches of stones are falling down’, what if ‘the slopes of ruthless gorges are joining’, erstwhile it is not bad that depends on the future of this world... And he immediately explains:
'Cause what's the form of future space?
Like an underground river?
The caves in the scales will wash out,
The gold veins will discover –
Because the source
Because the source
He's inactive beating.
Tomasz A. Żak
Smolenian Anthology II. 96 lines. Łódź – Warsaw – Wrocław 2020, Solidarnia Association 2010. It was printed thanks to the financial support of members of the 2010 Solidarnia Association.
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