Cecilia woloch poems for funerals

One made of wind and starlight, pulsing, heart that matched the human heart. Surely that god watches us, now, one eye in the river, one eye where the river was. I was leaving a country of rain for a country of apples. I told my beloved to wear his bathrobe, his cowboy boots, a black patch like a pirate might wear over his sharpest eye. My own bags were full of salt, which made them shifty, hard to lift.

Houses had fallen, face first, into the mud at the edge of the sea. HurryI thought, and my hands were like birds. They could hold nothing. A feathery breeze. Then a white tree blossomed over the bed, all white blossoms, a painted tree. The breath in my chest Insistent in its choice. But, here again, I may have misread your question! Can you give readers some insights into how this unique background shapes both your personal and creative identity, and what it means to not only be an American, but an American writer with a very vivid, living connection to the old world?

I tried, as a child, but it felt false to me, and made me feel false to myself. So, these were sort of outsider communities, where there was just no single, clear identity, and that ended up having tragic consequences. My first husband said that I had a pathological fear of boredom and a pathological fear of the suburbs. I also have a more vague problem with group identities, in general.

All of this no doubt has some bearing on the fact that it was only when I started spending long periods traveling, especially in Europe, that I felt myself at home in the larger world. As a woman, my country is the whole world. Not at all. Although, when I was growing up, my maternal relatives in Pittsburgh embraced a Polish-American identity, that Polish-American working-class culture bore little resemblance to the Polish culture I found—not just in the cities but in the villages and the countryside—when I started to visit Poland.

In your view, how close has humanity come to living in the total absence of light, or are we already at that point? In other words, did you write the poem as an attempt to prevent the ultimate disaster, or did you already consider it a song about the darkness? It made me furious, frankly. Really, that seems completely irresponsible to me. I wrote them out of personal necessity and a sense of terrifying urgency.

Cecilia woloch poems for funerals: Cecilia Woloch: “I'm a poet, writer,

How do you feel about translation? Do you believe, like many, that a great deal is always lost, or have you found that effective translators have, in many cases, been able to resolve difficult sentences or phrases, and perhaps even, made them better than the original? Also, once a Polish translator made a mistake in translating one of my poems that improved the poem so much that I changed the original to match it.

DG: Do you think language is a product of culture or does culture emerge from a language? To draw a humorous example, the typical Russian will almost never smile at strangers and be far more comfortable with silence around friends than the average Italian, whose tendencies are exactly the opposite, even though both their languages exhibit similar registers of complexity, making their potential for expression roughly the same.

Have been robbed by a Russian gang in Warsaw and rescued by off-duty police in Paris. Can build a fire and bathe in a bucket. Can apply lipstick in a rearview mirror. Also write poems and narrative non-fiction. They folded their wings and clung to the walls without a quiver as I undressed. I knew, as soon as I switched off the lamp, that the air would go pale with their fluttering.

I knew, in my sleep, one might light on my arm, on my cheek, in my hair, without waking me. In this room, also, the seeds of wildflowers gleaned from the meadows were spread out to dry. What I learned about gentleness then. What I learned to be gently less wary of. I want not to forget those nights in the lower Carpathians, deep spring, sleeping alone: the white moths swirling as I dreamt; the meadows baring themselves to the moon.

Or the little gold clocks in your irises, or the long stems of sun on your desk. So you just dress in coffee and beautiful rags and be glad of it, ashes and all.

Cecilia woloch poems for funerals: Upon the blank page

And you hum to yourself some ridiculous tune that sounds like a handkerchief stuffed in your mouth. I watched as he swung the pick into the air and brought it down hard and changed the shape of the world, and changed the shape of the world again. All the quick children have gone inside, called by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands honey-dinner's-getting-cold, just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home- and only the slow children out on the lawns, marking off paths between fireflies, making soft little sounds with their mouths, ohs, that glow and go out and glow.

And their slow mothers flickering, pale in the dusk, watching them turn in the gentle air, watching them twirling, their arms spread wide, thinking, These are my children, thinking, Where is their dinner? Where has their father gone? My own bags were full of salt, which made them shifty, hard to lift.

Cecilia woloch poems for funerals: Video statement on the occasion of

Houses had fallen, face first, into the mud at the edge of the sea. Hurry, I thought, and my hands were like birds. They could hold nothing. A feathery breeze. Then a white tree blossomed over the bed, all white blossoms, a painted tree. We want to be human, always, again, so we knelt like children at prayer while our lost mothers hushed us. A halo of bees.

I was dreaming as hard as I could dream. It was fast—how the apples fattened and fell. The country that rose up to meet me was steep as a mirror; the gold hook gleamed. These are the roads we drove into the country with whomever had sweet, cheap wine. This is the sky of watery silk under which we wrecked our hearts, cried out; the song of gnat and firefly and wasp and dove and frog.

Here is the place I chose exile from, sharp-hearted, sure of some other world. And still, how it takes me back. How you grip the wheel and laugh, don't say Remember. Don't say anything. Crow, I cried, I need to talk to you. The whole sky lurched. Black wings. Most bitter trees I've ever seen. Wild daffodils. Here is a world that is just as the world was world before we named it world.

Here is a sky that screams back at me as I rush toward it, darkening. I shut that black wing from my heart. That bad bad bird. I slam the light. Wrong love, it flaps, wrong love. I slit the curtains of my eyes. If one more death makes room for one more death, I've died enough. I've died in rooms that bird screeched through, the blood-tipped feathers in my hands.

The years of longing in its craw. The little claws like dangling hooks that ruined my nakedness for good. I wave my arms to make it go. As if the sky could take it back. As if my heart, that box of shadows, could be locked against itself. You're not a teenage girl but you feel the heat rising off these boys. Their eyes when you enter the classroom: lowered flame; the body curves.

And when you lean across a desk to whisper good, you smell their necks.