The Canine Sense of Smell — Web Exclusive
By Ewa Lipska
Translated by Margret Grebowicz
Poetry was extinguished
in its illiterate sleep.
"The Haywain" by Hieronymus Bosch wobbles
across the earthly gallery.
A defeated angel
stands at the edge of the highway.
An engine steams.
The leadership leans
A mob blooms
on the shoulder.
The devil hands out
mp3 players.
He tempts us with music.
Divine satanic little arts.
Christ above the clouds.
A pilgrim on the road.
Between them the canine sense of smell
and a grave silence.
Ewa Lipska was born in 1945 in Kraków. She is a Polish poet from the generation of the Polish "New Wave." Collections of her verse have been translated into English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, German, and Hungarian. She divides her time between Vienna and Kraków.
Margret Grebowicz specializes in feminist and critical race theories read through the lens of contemporary European thought. She is especially interested in the production of knowledge after modernity. She has published articles and book chapters on Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Donna Haraway, Antonio Negri, Emmanuel Levinas, Catherine MacKinnon, and Paul Feyerabend, among others. She is the editor of two anthologies, SciFi in the Mind's Eye: Reading Science Through Science Fiction and Gender After Lyotard, the co-editor of Still Seeking an Attitude: Critical Reflections of the Work of June Jordan, and currently at work on a co-authored book on the recent work of Donna Haraway, to be published by Columbia University Press. She is also an active literary translator from her native Polish.
Original text: Ewa Lipska, Pomarancza Neivtona. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2007.