Alicja Maria Kuberska (Poland)

Exclusive: European poetry: Curated by Agron Shele

  Alicja Maria Kuberska – awarded Polish poetess, novelist, journalist, editor.

She edited many volumes both Polish and English. Her poems have been published in numerous anthologies and magazines in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, the UK, Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Albania, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Argentina, Chile, Peru,Mexico, Israel, the USA, Canada, India, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan,China, South Africa, Zambia, Australia.

She won : distinction (2014) and medal (2015) on Nosside poetry competition in Italy, statuette in Lithuania (2015), medal of European Academy Science, Arts and Letters in France (2018)), award of Cultural Festival International “Tra le parole e l’ infinito” Italy (2018), Bolesław Prus Prize Poland (2019), Culture Animator Poland(2019) and Premio Internazionale di Poesia Poseidonia- Paestrum Italy (2019).

 Alicja Kuberska is a member of the Polish Writers Associations in Warsaw (Poland) and IWA Bogdani,(Albania). She is also a member of directors’ board of Soflay Literature Foundation (Pakistan), Our Poetry Archive (India). She is Polish Ambassador of Culture of The Inner Child Press (the USA) and she belongs to Editorial Advisory Board of Sahitya Anand (India).

Prescription for a poem

It is not easy to write a poem

You have to gather your thoughts

Swirling quickly like snowflakes during a blizzard

Catch them before they melt and disappear into oblivion

Later add fever of feelings and strength of emotion

Decorate your sentences with your dreams collected

from the silver dust of falling stars.

You can also

pick out a melancholy longing from the bottom of the lake

and hang it on eyelashes to shine with tears

Then collect the wet haze of sadness

shimmering like drops of dew on calamus,

add grayness of the November’ s landscape

Season it with a bit of bitterness and regret

Or you can

Capture the laughter suspended by an echo

Between high mountain peaks

Catch the merry words in the net of butterflies

carried by the warm breath of the wind

Turn the rainbow over to add a smile to the sky

Sprinkle it with a touch of humor and joy

Finally, crazy metaphors must be released

Let them draw colors from the imagination

That the poem would acquire a transparent lightness

and like a soup bubble rise above everyday life

Allow it to fly off in an unknown direction

Incorrigible Dreamer

Every day I am slowly leaving.

I step to the rhythm of minutes.

The evanescence is astounding

– Days and years pass

At an ever increasing speed.

I am living in an ephemeral world.

My house of cards can be demolished

By each gust of events,

But with an insistence of a maniac, I build

Castles in the air, inside my imagination.

I am running towards mirages and I am looking for

Greener grass in the neighbor’s garden

I cannot appreciate what I have

– I regret only when certainty

Turns into uncertainty.

I know I am an incorrigible dreamer.

The Wonders of the World

I have never been to Hawaii.

Not for me, do the palm trees dance in the wind,

The sun’s rays do not caress my skin,

The hot magma does not flow from the heart of the Earth.

I have not seen colored hummingbirds

hanging like living jewels on the flowers.

The exotic and beautiful butterflies,

Similar to the fans of the Japanese geisha,

do not fly around me.

I have not climbed the steps of the ancient pyramids.

I have not seen the treasures of the pharaohs

And the huge Temple of Amun.

I cannot dance the Spanish flamenco

And I am not enveloped in a delicate, Indian sari.

The Amazon does not open the gate to the green paradise

And ruthless tundra does not lead to the white hell.

The ocean does not show its underwater treasury

And dolphins do not play on the backs of the waves.

I have not met a happy eternal love,

But this does not mean that it does not exist.

War in the Middle East

Memories like grains of sand,

during a storm in the desert,

swirl violently in the mind.

They hit hard, hurt badly.

Eye wanders around a desolate city

I remember, a school was there

and next to it a library and a flower shop.

Huge cavities in the ground gape instead

surrounded by charred tree stumps.

Silence spills in a wide stream

over empty streets and ashes,

settling like dust on broken glass.

Birds flew away, the absent inhabitants fell silent.

Wind wails among the ruins and then,

as echo, the whistle of falling bombs returns.

***

In a surviving building without a wall,

as if on a great theatrical stage of life,

an old man sits alone, reading a book.

Hunger and fear drove neighbors away

He did not run, and became a guardian of hope

Poor people suffer and die.

Politicians speak beautifully of peace,

democracy, and human rights.

Greedy businessmen count profits

from the trade of weapons.

Vampires hover over the oil fields

swabbing the last drops of black blood

from the tormented desert land.

Setu, October 2019