Anna Kamieńska

This morning, we consider a poem by Anna Kamieńska (April 12, 1920 – May 10, 1986), Polish poet, writer, translator and literary critic.

She wrote fifteen books of poetry; two volumes of "Notebooks", providing a shorthand record of her readings and self-questioning; three volumes of commentaries on the Bible; and translations from several Slavic languages as well as from Hebrew, Latin and French.

Her poems record the struggles of a rational mind with religious faith, addressing loneliness and uncertainty in a direct, unsentimental manner. They also touch on Judaism, and the total loss of Jewish culture and the Yiddish language from Poland as a result of the Holocaust.

A Prayer That Will Be Answered

Lord let me suffer much
and then die

Let me walk through silence
and leave nothing behind not even fear

Make the world continue
let the ocean kiss the sand just as before

Let the grass stay green
so that the frogs can hide in it

so that someone can bury his face in it
and sob out his love

Make the day rise brightly
as if there were no more pain

And let my poem stand clear as a windowpane
bumped by a bumblebee’s head

--Anna Kamieńska

[translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanaugh]