Anna Kamienska

I stumbled on the poet Anna Kamienska, a Christian, Polish poet who is known for her notebooks. Although I keep returning to some of her poems, I still haven’t found time to do some more research on her work. But I am really curious. Her notebook A Nest of Quiet if full of phrases and thoughts that are curious, wise, honest, funny, hard and a lot about death, which turns out to be a lot about living . . .

From her A Nest of Quiet notebook:

I now exist on the principle of shortsightedness, which demands enhanced attention to the moment. Late wisdom, but close to the wisdom of childhood. A lovely summer day. Color, taste, scent. A squirrel. Cherries. Good tiredness. Cauliflower for supper. Clean house. And always darkness, darkness that spreads around all of it. Everything submerged in awful darkness.

And this from her In That Great River: A Notebook:

Why do I need these landscapes? The image of the sea draws me out of myself, forces all my attention to the surface so that I can cast my thought into the depths once again. As if an imaginative blow were needed for a longer, better-aimed thrust into the depths. Contemplation. The roots of my astonishment at the world cling tight to my inner life, in a tangle of memories, experiences, atavisms from both my own childhood and that of our species.

Here is what Poetry Foundation says about her: “Anna Kamienska was a poet, translator, critic, essayist, and editor. She published numerous collections of her own work and translated poetry from several Slavic languages, as well as sacred texts from Hebrew and Greek.” But I bet she was more than this description… I look forward to finding out.

Gratitude | Anna Kamienska

A tempest threw a rainbow in my face
so that I wanted to fall under the rain
to kiss the hands of an old woman to whom I gave my seat
to thank everyone for the fact that they exist
and at times even feel like smiling
I was grateful to young leaves that they were willing
to open up to the sun
to babies that they still
felt like coming into this world
to the old that they heroically
endure until the end
I was full of thanks
like a Sunday alms-box
I would have embraced death
if she’d stopped nearby

Gratitude is a scattered
homeless love

A Path in the Woods | Anna Kamieńska

I don’t trust the truth of memories

because what leaves us departs forever

There’s only one current of this sacred river

but I still want to remain faithful

to my first astonishments

to recognize as wisdom the child’s wonder

and to carry in myself until the end a path

in the woods of my childhood

dappled with patches of sunlight

to search for it everywhere

in museums in the shade of churches

this path on which I ran unaware

a six-year old

toward my primary mysterious aloneness

(And then there is Czeslow Milosz. . . see his poems below. The first one is his thoughts on Anna Kamienska.)

Reading the Notebook of Anna Kamienska | Czeslaw Milosz

Reading her, I realized how rich she was and myself, how poor
Rich in love and suffering, in crying and dreams and prayer.
She lived among her own people who were not very happy but
supported each other,
And were bound by a pact between the dead and living renewed
at the graves.
She was gladdened by herbs, wild roses, pines, potato fields
And the scents of the soil, familiar since childhood.
She was not an eminent poet. But that was just:
A good person will not learn the wiles of art.

Late Ripeness | Czeslaw Milosz

Translated by Robert Hass and Czeslaw Milosz

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,

I felt a door opening in me and I entered

the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,

like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas

assigned to my brush came closer,

ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,

grief and pity joined us.

We forget—I kept saying—that we are all children of the King.

For where we come from there is no division

into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part

of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago—

a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror

of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel

staving its hull against a reef—they dwell in us,

waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,

as are all men and women living at the same time,

whether they are aware of it or not.

Playing around with the sun in my study…