Three poems
In 2021, Małgorzata Lebda ran the entire length of the longest river in Poland, the Vistula, from its source in the Beskid Mountains to its mouth at the Baltic Sea. She set out to run as a poet, not as an athlete, to use the rhythms of her own body as a means of understanding and connecting to the rhythms of the river’s body of water, under threat of environmental ruin. Lebda’s 2021 collection Mer de Glace, from which these poems come, is the culmination of her remarkable journey.
Mira Rosenthal
When she took it upon herself to run the 1,113-kilometer distance of the Vistula, documenting her journey in regular installments in the magazine Pismo, Lebda was already well known as the author of five poetry collections that convey a new ecological awareness and approach to nature. At face value, her poems come across as straightforward and accessible. But that simplicity stems from the knowledge that writers often wield elaborate metaphors to establish difference from and dominance over other animals. Instead, Lebda builds a multi-directional network of evolving motifs and oppositions through which to interrogate the rural myth—a poetic system on full display in her 2020 collected triptych of books Matters of the Earth. The volume demonstrates Lebda’s sensitivity and imaginative capacity to stand on the side of nature, writing to a large extent in its defense while also grappling with a posthumanist awareness that language is dangerous.
In Mer de Glace, Lebda turns a similar awareness to the planet’s interconnected waterways and humans’ entanglement with them. Spurred in part by an activist energy against the plan to build the E40 waterway—a transport route connecting the Baltic Sea with the Black Sea that would have devastating environmental effects, including degrading protected wetlands and dredging up radioactive sediment from the Chernobyl disaster—her run informs the collection’s investigation into the complex and difficult-to-grasp relationship between the embodied self and the material world. “You have to be attentive and listen to the intensity of movement,” Lebda wrote in Pismo, and it is movement—on a macro and micro scale, as critic Joanna Mąkowska points out—that characterize these poems.
In short lyrics, many written “from the body,” interspersed with a series of prose poems that locate us in relation to place and season, Lebda searches for “a form that does not scream but listens,” as Mąkowska puts it. “The poet is therefore looking for a form that… reaches deep into the structures of language and imagination, and does not glide over the surface of common meanings.” In this way, Mer de Glace achieves a similar quality as the volume Alphabet by Danish poet Inger Christensen, in which an awareness of the unity of the world emerges from a beginning of simple statements. The Italian writer Claudio Magris’ unhurried trip along the Danube that evolves into a colorful portrait of Central European culture also serves as a model for Lebda, who turns a comparable eye on her subject and asks: What does it mean to paint a region from an attitude of responsibility rather than dominance, empathy instead of exploitation? We find the answer in her quietly profound poems.
Seasonal Plots (I)
Earth; the trouble with language; the trouble with temperature; with this; the coming of spring; the counting down to upheaval; fungus engulfing the eastern facing room; and swallows—the naming of them anew each day; then work; dense hours of work; the work of work; the reading, reading, reading of some poems, out loud; the nailing up of a horseshoe (not as it should be); but luck, what luck; therefore: praised be the clay, praised be the final chill; praised be the movement and the setting off, the closing moments of this—the turning back toward home, praised be that which is constant and also what is fickle, praised be all we can place in the mouth.
Pory miejsc (I)
Ziemia; kłopot w języku; kłopot w temperaturze; kłopot w tym; przedwiośnie; odliczanie do wstrząsu; grzyb, który bierze wschodni pokój; jaskółki—nadawanie im co dzień nowych imion; praca; gęste godziny pracy; praca pracy; czytanie wierszy, czytanie wierszy, czytanie wierszy na głos; wieszanie podkowy (nie tak jak należy); szczęście, a jednak szczęście; zatem: niech będzie pozdrowiona glina, niech będzie pozdrowiony ostatni chłód, niech będzie pozdrowiony ruch, niech będzie pozdrowione wyruszanie, finał tego—powrót w stronę domu, niech będzie pozdro- wione to, co stałe, ale też to, co kapryśne, niech będzie pozdrowione wszystko, co da się wziąć do ust.
From the Body: Five
Pointless to remind it of diseases of those bodies
close to us. On the occasions it refuses to cooperate,
it can—at most, but still a lot—walk.
Pointless. Completely pointless to remind it that
it had to bear another body, a body loved and
yes, with every month—it’s true—a bit lighter.
Completely useless.
Pipe down—I say to myself—along the gully
of the Rudawa River, something is flowing
against the stream.
Z ciała: pięć
Niepotrzebnie przypominać mu o chorobie bliskich
nam ciał. W takich razach odmawia współpracy, można
—co najwyżej, a to i tak dobrze—iść.
Niepotrzebnie. Zupełnie niepotrzebnie przypominać
mu o tym, że musiało dźwigać inne ciało, kochane,
i z każdym miesiącem, to prawda, lżejsze, tak.
Zupełnie to niepotrzebne.
Ciszej tam—mówię do siebie
—korytem Rudawy coś płynie
pod prąd.
Seasonal Plots (VI)
Gold light paints shadows of the Zamioculcas on the wall; winter; a slow circulation of cold; cracked skin cold; the rising of radiance—higher, higher; the casting of doubt; the peeking at the fire; the sorting of trash; the talking to a blackbird; the plucking of berries from a hawthorn bush; the braiding of hair; the swearing; the sharpening of knives—a whetstone; the chopping of wood; a splinter and the purple hue that works its way toward the heart; the tapping on the house—yoo-hoo; the summoning of snow, since snow is what there is; work and its cold hands along your neck; work (because there’s no saying no); and music, above all, music—Кино—east instead of west (and yet); the feeding of the animals; scars on skin; the drawing of water (room temperature for the Monstera); the putting in of eyedrops; the baking of Gray Reinettes with cinnamon and cloves; yams, pine nuts; the opening of windows; the knocking on doors; a recognition; a welcome inside; silence rather than the turbine of talk, and if talk, then seeing; a face, many faces; many promising features; the practicing of moderation; the practicing of statistics; the practicing of opposition; the reading, reading, reading of some poems, out loud; the writing, writing, writing in fear, out of a crisis of language; united fears of subjects that make you want to scream (I was going to write—howl, yes); a movement of the head in the direction of hooting; the funerals of glaciers—the applying of white shrouds to their faces to divert the sun’s attention; how can they be mourned? The diverting of the sun’s attention—the playing with it a game of fetch.
Pory miejsc (VI)
Złoto malujące na ścianie cienie zamiokulkasa; zima; powolne obroty chłodu; rany od chłodu; podnoszenie jasnego—wysoko, wysoko; podawanie w wątpliwość; podglądanie ognia; segregowanie śmieci; mówienie do kosa; zrywanie głogu; splatanie włosów; przekleństwa; ostrzenie noży—osełka; rąbanie drewna; drzazga i fiolet od drzazgi, który wspina się w kierunku serca; opukiwanie domu—hop, hop; wywoływanie śniegu, bo raczej śnieg tu niż inne; praca i jej zimne dłonie na szyi; praca (bo nie możesz powiedzieć jej nie); muzyka, nade wszystko muzyka—Кино—bowiem raczej Wschód niż Zachód (a jednak); karmienie zwierząt; blizny; przygotowywanie wody (pokojowa temperatura dla monster); zakraplanie oczu; pieczenie szarej renety—cynamon, goździki; bataty, orzeszki pinii; otwieranie okien; pukanie do drzwi; rozpoznanie; zapraszanie do środka; raczej cisza niż turbiny rozmowy, a jeśli rozmowa, to patrzenie; twarz, twarze; wiele obiecujące rysy; ćwiczenie się w umiarze, ćwiczenie się w statystykach, ćwiczenie się w sprzeciwie; czytanie wierszy, czytanie wierszy, czytanie wierszy na głos; pisanie, w przestrachu, bo kryzys języka; zjednoczone strachy tematów, o których chce się krzyczeć (miałam napisać—wyć, tak); ruch głowy w stronę pohukiwań; pogrzeby lodowców—nakładanie na nie białych całunów odwracających uwagę słońca; co z żałoby dla nich? Odwracanie uwagi słońca—rzucanie mu na aport.