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  • Travel permit, round trip
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Travel permit, round trip

Piotr Sommer

A small calf on a cart, on cobblestones, happily whisking his tail, a Polish stork, lost in thought, a
peasant woman wearing, as you’d expect, a kerchief on her head. A basket in her hand. The
landscape rolls along at the same, steady pace, without stopping, and then illogically veils itself
with hills.
I switch seats with a child who would rather watch the world unroll.
The tape is winding up somewhere on the other side and the reel must already be bulging.
It contains so much, all that and this too, the perpetual policemen, by trade and calling, stalking
furiously, and these light-hearted village names: Pszczółki, Szymankowo.
My face may be still, but in my heart I’m bursting with laughter. We’re allowed to travel
by train again. This delicate pressure on my arm is only your sleep.


Piotr Sommer

from Continued (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe, 2005) published simultaneously by Wesleyan University Press

translated by Elżbieta Volkmer and Halina Janod

Reproduced by kind permission of the author and publisher.

Tags:

cows landscape observation Polish travel

About this poem

This poem, representing Poland, is part of The Written World – our collaboration with BBC radio to broadcast a poem from every single nation competing in London 2012.

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Piotr Sommerb.1948

Piotr Sommer lives in Warsaw. He is a poet, eminent translator of contemporary Anglo-Saxon poetry, and editor of the  journal Literatura na Świecie (World Literature). His two collections in English from Bloodaxe, Things to translate (1991) and Continued (2005), contain translations by...
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