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| POET'S CORNER Jan Sztaudynger The subjects of this week's poem are, of all things, copulating mushrooms. The author of this strange and funny poem is Jan Sztaudynger, who enjoyed enormous popularity as a poet in postwar Poland. He is particularly remembered for his trifles Fraszki, which were simply epigrams offering great insights into all the little factors that consume our thoughts during the course of a day. From his book entitled The Rapture of Lovers, for example, he has this to say concerning the "The drift of things in a love affair:" "First the compliments, then the ailments." In The Tale About Mushrooms, God is seen as a spoilsport, an irritable bureaucrat who needs the forum of a moral crusade in order to assert his sway over people's lives; one who simply can't abide the thought of furtive fungal sex sessions going on behind the bushes. God comes up with a plan to bring an end to this rampant sinfulness by raising them from the shadows of the forest floor and turning them into giants the size of trees. As it turns out, all of these changes have absolutely no effect on the fun-loving mushrooms, who are as happy rolling around under the gaze of the stars as they were frolicking about in the grass-symbolically speaking of course. As usual, people are a little bit slow to accept change, and the inability of the mushroom gatherers to see what has happened represents, in some measure, our tendency in life to look down as opposed to looking up; to look to the past and not the future. Anyhow, the mushrooms of this poem have, despite their mutation, retained their vibrant spirit. No one managed to wrest that away from them. A Tale about Mushrooms One certain day, God, solidly bored and perplexed, Thought on the cavorting of the fungal set, so vexed was he at their popping in holes behind a bush. A change was called for, a plan, enough was enough! The historic year in the calendar of our era, September 20, 1554, God so planned: Changes in forestry canons, new, modern woodland, Where the mushrooms could join the stars in the sky, Growing from the soil to top-branch high, The gatherers came out with thousands of baskets But, stuck in age-old custom were closed like caskets. They wandered with their eyes peeled to the forest floor, Whilst mushrooms larked with stars-having fun galore. Disappointed, the gatherers bowed lower to the ground, But by chance glanced up at the blue sky and this tale they found. Therefore the moral of the story is that man has this nature: Only from time to time will he look up... Introduction and translation by Barry Keane |
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