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),
Boles┼Вaw 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.
