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Anna Swirszczynska) Swir was born in Warsaw in 1909, the daughter of a painter. Growing up in poverty in her father's studio, she had to work for money at an early age. She put herself through the university, studying medieval Polish literature. Her first poems, published in the 1930s, were short prose poems anchored firmly in reality and reflecting in form her father's miniature paintings. World War II, the destruction of Warsaw, and the occupation of Poland changed her radically. Swir was a member of the Resistance, writing for underground publications, and served as a military nurse in a makeshift hospital during the sixty-three days of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. She escaped execution and survived the war.
But it wasn't until thirty years later that she was able to write about her wartime experiences. She said: "We could say in paradoxical abbreviation that a writer has two tasks. The first -- to create one's own style. The second -- to destroy one's own style. The second is more is more difficult and takes more time."
BUILDING THE BARRICADE (1974), out of print for over a generation, is a collection of short poems -- again miniatures, snapshots -- whose intense power is derived from their point-blank honesty, their "antipoetic" clarity, and their sympathetic eye on human beings living under and through a godless human condition.
Her later poetry, equally unembellished and direct, embraces the flesh of the human body, elderly sex, mortality, and a fierce radical feminism.
Anna Swir died of cancer in 1984.
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BUILDING THE BARRICADE
We were afraid as we built the barricade
under fire.
The tavern-keeper, the jeweler's mistress, the barber,
all of us cowards.
The servant-girl fell to the ground
as she lugged a paving stone, we were terribly afraid
all of us cowards --
the janitor, the market-woman, the pensioner.
The pharmacist fell to the ground
as he dragged the door of a toilet,
we were even more afraid, the smuggler-woman,
the dressmaker, the streetcar driver,
all of us cowards.
A kid from reform school fell
as he dragged a sandbag,
you see we were really
afraid.
Though no one forced us,
we did build the barricade
under fire.
-- Anna Swir
translated by Magnus J. Krynski
and Robert A. Maguire
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I CONVERSED WITH CORPSES
I slept under the same blanket with corpses,
apologizing to the corpses
for still being alive.
That was tactless. They forgave me.
That was poor judgment. They were surprised.
Life
after all was so very dangerous then.
-- Anna Swir
translated by Magnus J. Krynski
and Robert A. Maguire
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