April 13: Janusz Szuber's "About a Boy Stirring Jam"

They Carry a Promise, a volume of poems selected from the work of the Polish master Janusz Szuber and translated by Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough, is the first opportunity for English-speaking readers to experience his elegant and rigorous work. Szuber, who has published eighteen collections in his native country, was born in 1947 and lives in the old city of Sanok.


About a Boy Stirring Jam

A wooden spoon for stirring jam,
Dripping sweet tar, while in the pan
Plum magma’s bubbles blather.
For someone who can’t grasp the whole
There’s salvation in the remembered detail.
What, back then, did I know about that?
The real, hard as a diamond,
Was to happen in the indefinable
Future, and everything seemed
Only a sign of what was to come. How naïve.
Now I know inattention is an unforgivable sin
And each particle of time has an ultimate dimension.


Download the broadside of “About a Boy Stirring Jam”

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