Two Poems by Krystyna Dąbrowska

Translated from the Polish by Karen Kovacik

Echolocation

Long after it ended he kept sending her signals
like the ultrasound bats use to track insects.
Targeted, she stung the air, and then he had her.
That went on till she tried another way,
not knowing that practiced moths did the same:
pierced by the bat’s squeal, they fold
their wings, fall to the ground, and save their lives.

Echolokacja

Jeszcze długo po końcu wysyłał jej sygnały
jak ultradźwięki, którymi nietoperz namierza owada.
Trafiona, żądliła powietrze, a wtedy już ją miał.
To trwało, dopóki wreszcie nie spróbowała inaczej,
nie wiedząc, że tak robią wyćwiczone ćmy:
przeszyte piskiem nietoperza, natychmiast
składają skrzydła, spadają na ziemię, ratują życie.

Ultrasound

“Did you have a breast ultrasound this year?”
“I think so. Maybe in the spring.”
“But not at this clinic.”
“No, on Waryński Street. Yes, now I remember.
I rode my bike there, and on every block
volunteers handed out daffodils to passersby,
so it was April 19, anniversary
of the Ghetto uprising.”
My doctor smiles.
And now that day comes back, sunny, warm.
I undressed in a cramped cubby
prior to entering the exam room.
I took off my shirt carefully, so as not
to detach the papery flower   
over my heart. And just then
the sirens wailed.

Ultrasonografia

– Robiła pani w tym roku USG piersi?
– Wydaje mi się, że tak. Jakoś wiosną.
– Ale nie u nas.
– Nie, na Waryńskiego... Aha, już sobie przypominam.
  Jechałam tam na rowerze i co chwila mijałam
  wolontariuszy z żonkilami,  rozdawali je przechodniom,
  czyli to było dziewiętnastego kwietnia, w rocznicę
  wybuchu powstania w getcie.
Moja doktor uśmiecha się.
A do mnie wraca tamten dzień, słoneczny, ciepły.
Rozbierałam się do badania zamknięta
w klitkowatym przedsionku gabinetu.
Zdjęłam koszulę, ostrożnie, żeby się nie odkleił
papierowy kwiat na wysokości serca.
I wtedy zawyły syreny.

Krystyna Dąbrowska (b. 1979) is a poet, essayist, and translator. She’s the author of five poetry collections: Biuro podróży (Travel Agency, 2006), Białe krzesła (White Chairs, 2012), Czas i przesłona (Time and Aperture, 2014), Ścieżki dźwiękowe (Soundtracks, 2018) and Miasto z indu (City of Indium, 2022), in which the two poems appearing in The Dodge were first published. In 2013, she won two of the most prestigious Polish literary prizes: the Wisława Szymborska Award and the Kościelski Award, and in 2019 – the Literary Award of the Capital City of Warsaw. Her poems have been translated into fifteen languages. They appear regularly in literary magazines in Poland and abroad, including Poetry, Harper’s Magazine, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, Southern Review, and Modern Poetry in Translation. Her first collection in English, Tideline, translated by Karen Kovacik, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, and Mira Rosenthal, appeared in 2022 from Zephyr Press. She lives and works in Warsaw. As to the question of the appearance of nature in her poetry, Dąbrowska writes: “I am more interested in human nature. I just use all kinds of metaphors, also from animal and plant life, to talk about it."(b. 1979) is a poet, essayist, and translator. She’s the author of five poetry collections: Biuro podróży (Travel Agency, 2006), Białe krzesła (White Chairs, 2012), Czas i przesłona (Time and Aperture, 2014), Ścieżki dźwiękowe (Soundtracks, 2018) and Miasto z indu (City of Indium, 2022), in which the two poems appearing in The Dodge were first published. In 2013, she won two of the most prestigious Polish literary prizes: the Wisława Szymborska Award and the Kościelski Award, and in 2019 – the Literary Award of the Capital City of Warsaw. Her poems have been translated into fifteen languages. They appear regularly in literary magazines in Poland and abroad, including Poetry, Harper’s Magazine, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, Southern Review, and Modern Poetry in Translation. Her first collection in English, Tideline, translated by Karen Kovacik, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, and Mira Rosenthal, appeared in 2022 from Zephyr Press. She lives and works in Warsaw. As to the question of the appearance of nature in her poetry, Dąbrowska writes: “I am more interested in human nature. I just use all kinds of metaphors, also from animal and plant life, to talk about it."

Karen Kovacik has published translations of contemporary Polish poetry in many journals, including American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, West Branch, Mid-American Review, Poetry, Southern Review, Trafika Europe, Two Lines, and World Literature Today. In 2011 and 2018, she was awarded a fellowship in literary translation from the National Endowment for the Arts, and she’s the translator of Jacek Dehnel’s Aperture, a finalist for the 2019 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. She’s also the editor of Scattering the Dark, an anthology of Polish women poets (White Pine, 2016). With Mira Rosenthal and Antonia Lloyd-Jones, she is translator of poems in Krystyna Dąbrowska’s collection Tideline, published by Zephyr in 2022. Also a poet, she’s the author of the collections Metropolis Burning and Beyond the Velvet Curtain. She was Indiana’s Poet Laureate from 2012-2014.

Published April 15 2023