This Translation Tuesday, we bring to you four poems by one of the most widely acclaimed Czech poets of the twentieth century. These poems by Jan Skácel, recipient of the Petrarch Prize for Poetry, rendered in Daniela Kukrechtová’s translation, achieve a stunning potency in their brevity, evoking the beauty of the Moravian landscape that cycles through the seasons and its landscapes. In the short space of the poem, Skácel’s poems revel in the incongruity of his images and often unravel in their conclusions to a surprising revelation. 

South Moravia 

Let whoever wants to poke about in our blames;
marvelous are the nights on the plains,
when apricots sweeten
and rye hardens in the fields.

When night is tall, when from the night gallows
a man hangs,
by the road he stole 

love from someone and he is hanging for theft.

Autumn in the City 

Here is a city, squares and houses,
and also girls with chignons on their heads,
in which wind, a mouse, and desire dwell.

And also there is autumn.

And somewhere high above, there is the sun.
Dug in a cloud like a claw in a horse’s heart. READ MORE…