This Is a Glorious Tale
With a pocket knife
the world had been cut.
With a pocket knife
the world had been cut.
And much blood has been shed. Poems
and nights. The wind played along, but
didn’t finish—For women,
it was a matter of life,
but for us a matter of death, not only
our lips thirsted after
the spring. Even our voice!
Voice, dried out and blood-stained,
go to the home
which cliffs and greenery
perceive as lost—if it’s found for them, what
a time that will be!
it will push through with its prow
everything rotting in us now—
Born in Central Bohemia in 1919, Jirí Orten is considered one of the finest writers of Czechoslovakia’s so-called War Generation. His first book of poems, Cítanka jaor (Reader of Spring) was published in 1939. For fear of denunciation from anti-Semitic newspapers, he published his poems under pseudonyms. Orten’s poems show a strong influence of both Czech folklore and surrealism.
