Autoportret Witkacego [English translation]

I watch the world - another quirk,

so it’s not due to narcotics

I have the red eyes like rats in laboratories.

I’ve just stood up from the tables,

so not due to the pangs

I have the clenched lips of hungry Mongolian Khans.

I hear not words, but voices,

not due to thought disorders

I have the ears that stick out like naive snitches.

Everywhere I smell the bandits,

so not just for the stories

I have the typical nose’s shade of hurt Semites.

I see things in their meaning essential

and that makes me great, as well as singular.

Unlike you lordships, you will forgive the poet’s pen:

you are an idiot’s verse, calqued over and again.

I’ve got a neck that’s stiff

and that’s why I still live

That politics to me is slops in crystal chalice.

My mind as elbows - unyielding,

so do not kick me please

That revolution for me is the reddish nails.

Responsive like a membrane,

at night and through the morning

I tremble like a fresh spleen, pried out of an eel.

The world is doomed, I fear,

so to make the mood less ill

Like a child in dark room locked, on top of my lungs I scream

I even more than you all - suffocate and gasp

I even more than you all - don’t want to live but must

But I won’t let anyone touch me and that’s why

When needed I’ll take Witkacy from the world away.

• Artist:Jacek Kaczmarski