Dwie ciemności

by Anna Kamieńska

English (translation)
Original Polish

Genres: Poetry

241 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Polish poet, writer, translator and literary critic who wrote many books for children and adolescents.

Reviews

[Mattea Gernentz · Rating 4 out of 5]

"May the day rise so bright / as if there were no more suffering / And my poem be as transparent as a pane of glass / against which a lost bee hits its head" (A Prayer, 55).

I think Anna Kamieńska should be required reading for every Christian. The translation felt a bit clunky at certain points, but I'm sure the original is effervescent. I think she understands silence better than almost any writer, and she's also a Simone Weil fangirl, which is immensely relatable.

I couldn't help but read these lines over and over, such crisp diction and simple truth: "I believe that brilliance / is multiplied miraculously / onto all things" as well as "Lord give me what you have already given / in a prayer heard earlier / than uttered" (Autumn Prayer, 62).

"A Prayer Which Is Certain to Be Answered" and "The Janów Orchestra" gave me chills. Kamieńska lived through a pivotal historical moment as a Polish writer who witnessed the horrors of WWII.

"So give me the vanity of the passing moment / always tender as wisdom itself" (Vanity, 52).

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I don't believe in the other world // But also I don't believe in this world / unless it is pierced by light"
(from "The Other World")

Clear, fervent, luminous poems only occasionally marred by awkward translations. The Job cycle at the beginning of the book, in which Job whispers 'Lord Lord' in response to various situations is stunning. I have no idea if Kamieńska and Nelly Sachs read each other's work, but I definitely read their Job poems in conversation with each other. "A Prayer Which Is Certain to Be Answered" is the reason I read Two Darknesses in the first place, but I'll confess to preferring a different version than the one I found in this book. The translators are the same so I don't know if the translation I like is an earlier version or later revision. Either way, it's a devastating poem I wish I could read in the original Polish.


A PRAYER THAT WILL BE ANSWERED

Lord let me suffer much
and then die

Let me walk through silence
and leave nothing behind not even fear

Make the world continue
let the ocean kiss the sand just as before

Let the grass stay green
so that frogs can hide in it

so that someone can bury his face in it
and sob out his love

Make the die rise brightly
as if there were no more pain

And let my poem stand clear as a windowpane
bumped by a bumblebee's head


JOB'S PRAYER

Lord teach me to be silent
teach my tongue to be silent
and my lips
teach my heart to be silent
Teach me not to answer
ill-asked questions
and false accusations
Teach me to be silent
even when I speak

Teach me to be silent
when I want to shout
when silence aches
Teach me not to complain
not to talk about the inconstancy of life
how hard it is
how little in it of any sense

Teach me the sense of silence
and the silence of sense

Teach me to be silent also in death
as there are some whose death
shouts in advance to the very heaven

Teach me a prayer
which is longing
and asks for nothing

Teach me to be silent
above all with those
whom I love
let never a word
separate me from them

Teach me the silence
of a sick animal
the silence of cloud rain grass
the silence of evening and night
the silence of kindness
and gratitude

Lord teach me the silence of dreams
the silence of all my dead

Teach me Lord
your
deepest silence


"Nobody can know
what loneliness looks like
when the angel is gone
the world is then vast open and empty
and one finds no voice to say it
and there is no hand friendly enough
words are all dumb tethered

From then on even eternity
will be too short for waiting"
(from "Annunciation")


"We fear the eyes of animals
we don't trust pure snows
we forget the night sky
is like a glittering ant hill
we can't address plants and birds by name
our children won't come across hart and hedgehog running wild
nor the modest forest orchid
we don't know how to nurse a shoot
to grow into a tree of silence
we don't greet each other in the street with peace
we don't cut an overcoat in half
we let the old die in corridors
we don't trust big letters
we don't respect the evidence of a stone in a field
we have not seen God
in any burning bush"
(from "Prophets")