[Jim Moonan]

Originally Posted by John Isbell

I just picked up a volume called New European Poets, 330 pages of poetry from Malta to Belarus. So it covers a lot of ground. Here's a Polish poem by Dariusz Suska (translated by Alissa Valles):

Death is the top player in our playground,
not Suchy, who can keep a ball in the air,
or Chybowski, who is master of matches.
Death is our top player, Imiolczyk himself
with all his best tricks didn't come near
though once he put his head through glass
and the glass doors burst like ocean spray
and blood from his knees and his nose lay
clotted under the stairs. Death was the one
to beat Gruby on a bike, the first to switch
to a board. Death rules, is what I'm saying,
it builds us; builds, while we are decaying.

This is brilliant, to my ears. And I have lots of Polish in me.