When a thief is both an astronaut and an alien, the help he seeks can only be extraterrestrial, and whatever he has stolen is bound to be forgotten
Aaron Carter Is Dead,
Meanwhile
An astronaut dressed as an alien
because something’s not sitting right with him
says:
I’m not here to greet anyone, I’m here to say goodbye
I’m not coming back, I’m taking off
I’m not running away, I’m giving chase
An astronaut done up like an alien
for a debutante ball
right?
I’m not crying, I’m swallowing tears
I’m not screaming, I’m holding back at the throat
the scream’s tipping point
The astronaut hurls a saucer
at the saucer of some hungry, dumb
lamb of God
The astronaut in designer alienwear
comes up with
a game:
Bad is getting stuck in an elevator without signal
Worse is getting stuck in an elevator and needing to pee
The worst is getting stuck in an elevator, needing to pee,
next to a random twelve-year-old
The astronaut, in an alien mood,
shakes hands with a caterpillar
what kind of cosmic creature is that:
Bad is not having money to buy bread
Worse is knowing you’ll never have that kind of money again
The worst is when the world ends, and you’re still among the living
The astronaut, in a bad alien mood
wants to, but can’t,
forget the words in his mouth
The world?
I wish I could just
look at it and that’s it
Aaron Carter Is Dead,
Meanwhile
Your role: firefighter
lonely Sam
You race through life
Cover distances
You don’t run from problems
and you’re not more of a problem than anyone else
You shout: I am the moth,
the king and queen of the moth kingdom
Light is no longer my world!
You cover distances
but don’t gain a single second
You’re not running from a monster
You’re not chasing a monster and you’re not more of a monster
than anyone else
You shout: I am a meagre sybarite
a bashful hedonist
an unemployed breadwinner, a homeless housewife
a pointless bank transfer
no house to sell, to lose,
or even leave for fifteen minutes
a boxer with no fists, the fist of a pianist
an orphaned mamaboy – and light is no longer
my world, and the world is no longer my light
I am a demon who fights only his own demons
my prison is a house of cards!
Sometimes you gain
sometimes you lose a few pounds
In cops and robbers,
you’re the truly bad one
the hopeless one
In the arms race, you’d take first place
from the bottom, but the race never ends
You shout: I am the king and queen
of the moth kingdom, I have a shadow of doubt
I tally my losses, while counting on future gains
You gain uncertainty
Then say with calm assurance:
What interests me in people is the second they come
to a standstill, their moments of distraction
when they stare ahead and see nothing
but look like they’re seeing everything
You drive a fire truck, sirens blazing
but the fire isn’t your problem
You’re better than the fire
You say honestly speaking:
Twice a day I load the dish-
washer, once an hour
I check the fridge just to make sure
nothing’s going bad
I hate the vacuum, which can’t keep up
Everything’s under warranty in my house
Let’s call it what it is: the world is burning and cooling at once
and you’re not even a square chewable pill
You race through life, cool
Translated by Ewa & Lynn Suh
When a thief is both an astronaut and an alien, the help he seeks can only be extraterrestrial, and whatever he has stolen is bound to be forgotten
Translation rights: Dawid Skrabek, Piotr Pflegel; dawid.skrabek@literatura.wroclaw.pl, piotr.pflegel@literatura.wroclaw.pl
Being an outsider while still part of society is a poetic trope as old as poetry itself, or at least since the 19th century. What makes Adam Kaczanowski’s What a Thief Crying for Help Steals distinctive and appealing, however, is that the poetic subject experiences estrangement not just from society, but also from his own life choices. There is a fundamental scepticism not only about what the world has to offer, but how the self has come to terms with it. It is no surprise, then, that the thief also appears as ‘[a]n astronaut dressed as an alien / because something’s not sitting right with him’. Leaving Earth behind, the astronaut returns ‘dressed as an alien’. Alienation literally manifests in alien imagery, including ‘designer alienwear’ later in the poem.
Kaczanowski’s poetic subject confronts estrangement in yet another way: through the death of Aaron Carter. The collection opens with a section titled: ‘Aaron Carter Is Dead, / Meanwhile’. Aaron Carter – an American popstar who came to fame in the late 1990s and died in 2022 at the age of 34 while struggling with mental illness – becomes a symbol of a prematurely ended era. Carter’s exit from the world mirrors the thief ’s own titular cry for help, a plea for extraterrestrial intervention, while haunted by the sense of having stolen something only to forget what it was and where it is hidden.
Lynn Suh
Selected samples
She climbed her first peaks in a headscarf at a time when women in the mountains were treated by climbers as an additional backpack. It was with her that female alpinism began! She gained recognition in a spectacular way. The path was considered a crossing for madmen. Especially since the tragic accident in 1929, preserved … Continue reading “Halina”
First, Marysia, a student of an exclusive private school in Warsaw’s Mokotów district, dies under the wheels of a train. Her teacher, Elżbieta, tries to find out what really happened. She starts a private investigation only soon to perish herself. But her body disappears, and the only people who have seen anything are Gniewomir, a … Continue reading “Wound”
A young girl, Regina Wieczorek, was found dead on the beach. She was nineteen years old and had no enemies. Fortunately, the culprit was quickly found. At least, that’s what the militia think. Meanwhile, one day in November, Jan Kowalski appears at the police station. He claims to have killed not only Regina but also … Continue reading “Penance”
The year is 1922. A dangerous time of breakthrough. In the Eastern Borderlands of the Republic of Poland, Bolshevik gangs sow terror, leaving behind the corpses of men and disgraced women. A ruthless secret intelligence race takes place between the Lviv-Warsaw-Free City of Gdańsk line. Lviv investigator Edward Popielski, called Łysy (“Hairless”), receives an offer … Continue reading “A Girl with Four Fingers”
This question is closely related to the next one, namely: if any goal exists, does life lead us to that goal in an orderly manner? In other words, is everything that happens to us just a set of chaotic events that, combined together, do not form a whole? To understand how the concept of providence … Continue reading “Order and Love”
The work of Józef Łobodowski (1909-1988) – a remarkable poet, prose writer, and translator, who spent most of his life in exile – is slowly being revived in Poland. Łobodowski’s brilliant three- volume novel, composed on an epic scale, concerns the fate of families and orphans unmoored by the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war and … Continue reading “Ukrainian Trilogy: Thickets, The Settlement, The Way Back”
