De Se Ipso by Janusz Szuber - Traslated by Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough

Generous—ungenerous Fate
Begrudged him talent and beauty
(While it gave in abundance
To those without merit).

He asked himself how to escape
Intact from the hell of physiology:
The metaphysical horror of a can
He wanted in vain to open

From inside. All your works
Are like scooping water with a sieve,
An ascetic guru instructs.
Since shears will cut the thread,

The cable of the artery. Abel's breath
A cloud of dew on the mirror,
The guardian angel your Cain will keep.
With such consolation into short eternity!

Comforted by the master's diatribe,
Through the heat proof-fiber optics
Into the ear of nothingness he sent psalmodies
Like himself with no grace or harmony. •

Janusz Szuber is a Polish poet who published his first book of poetry in 1995 when he was forty-six years old. Since then twelve collections of his poems, as well as his selected poems, have appeared in print. In the eight years since his debut, Szuber has won great critical acclaim and received many prestigious literary prizes.

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