Translated from Polish by Artur Komoter

To you

Forced into action, I built a private ark.
I hid in it all the time of my prime.
And understanding those, who hate me:
Usurpers of my creativeness - drunks
- writers of God's grace, I show a symbol of compassion
- an erect middle finger of my poetic hand.

I do not care about the conspiracy of silence, I break the whisper
and in the essence of the word I carry it all to the world:
love, truth, hope.....
And these distracted, serious or trivial verses,
which look upon you with their hidden sadness.

In the name of love

In the nooks of the sky, we hid our desires
and hope - the sleep that knows no illusion.

In the maze of words, we hid our loneliness
- the molten pain,
flowing as a teardrop suddenly released.

We live in an eternal journey upstream,
in the world where standards are set by the majority
and so easily we succumb to authorities.
Or to the symbolism of elusive dream,
which pretty dangerously overpowers thoughts.

And in the moments, where we should go, we stay
- in the name of love, in the name of social proof of righteousness.

In the queue for fulfilled dreams

I'm standing in a queue for fulfilled dreams,
with people dressed in forced smiles
- scholars, labourers and street children,
who flawlessly say the first two letters of the alphabet.

I look at them when they toss about in the net of life events,
when they read books, when they buy bread.
And when they look for salvation
- new space of new time,
with hope and clarity of mind, to be able to look into the dark future,
- for the short days of their glory,
that I will be measuring by long verses.

Piotr Kasjas Polish poet who live in Birmingham. His works have been published in newspapers, in literature periodicals, in collections of poems and a number of almanacs and anthologies of poetry published in Poland and other countries. In 2013 he received the Golden Quill Award for Lifetime Achievement.