The Ocean

by Grzegorz Wroblewski / March 16th, 2025

“People with hemorrhoids are good
at making money.”
 
“Get ahold of yourself. You need
to go to a psychiatrist.”
I sensed he lived
under a rock.
 
“But he’s a psycho…”
 
“Then go to somewhere in Greece
in the middle of nowhere.”
 
“No way. They’d poison me with Metaxa.”
 
“But you’ll be able to see nude
statuettes there,”
popped into my head
and out of my mouth.
 
I couldn’t convince him to do anything
so he stopped hanging out with painters
who smoke peyote.
 
Apparently, he switched
to making figurative art:
zebras, the ocean, sunrises and sunsets, etc.
 
He stopped drinking, but that’s only a rumor.
 
No one’s actually seen him
in a long time and it’s not certain
that he’s still alive.

  • Translated by Peter Burzyński, PhD, Lecturer of English, Milwaukee Area Technical College
    • Grzegorz Wróblewski was born in 1962 in Gdansk and grew up in Warsaw. Since 1985 he has been living in Copenhagen. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, drama and other writings. A renowned visual artist, he has exhibited his paintings in Denmark, Germany, England and Poland. English translations of his work are available in Our Flying Objects (trans. Joel Leonard Katz, Rod Mengham, Malcolm Sinclair, Adam Zdrodowski, Equipage, 2007), A Marzipan Factory (trans. Adam Zdrodowski, Otoliths, 2010), Kopenhaga (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Zephyr Press, 2013), Let's Go Back to the Mainland (trans. Agnieszka Pokojska, Cervená Barva Press, 2014), Zero Visibility (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Phoneme Media, 2017), Dear Beloved Humans (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Dialogos Books, 2023). Wróblewski also authored a book of asemic writing Shanty Town (Post-Asemic Press, Minneapolis, USA, 2022). He has been awarded with scholarships from Danish Literature Council (Litteraturrådet) and Danish Arts Foundation (Statens Kunstfond). Read other articles by Grzegorz.

    This article was posted on Sunday, March 16th, 2025 at 8:00am and is filed under Poetry.