Polirish Poet Malkinski’s “Corona-balcony” Poems

We have been living in the days of unusual quietness. Lockdown has lent us the time for reading, talking, jogging, and even writing poetry.

My Polish friend, Zdzislaw Malkiński lived in Co Down for 12 years. When he had chosen Ballynahinch for his new home, little did he know that the surrounding Mourne Mountans would make him a poet and one of the best marathon runners in his age group winning numerous trophies for Orangegrove AC Belfast. Training daily on the hiking trails, he discovered the magic beauty of Narnia and the wonderfully scenic coastal line of the Irish Sea, the natural wonders of which echo in his (Irish) poems published at home in Poland.

April, May, and June of this year, Zdzislaw spent in his time on his wicker chair on the balcony of his house in Poland. He kept himself occupied by sending emails and writing what he described half-jokingly as the “Corona- balcony poems”. He had intended to get into shape for the half marathon in Las Palmas, but the lockdown had thwarted all his ambitious plans. To maintain sanity in these insane times, he threw his gauntlets to anyone with a poetic soul to do the same.

The poems below need some explanation as he posted them to me with a handful of his thoughts on past pandemics: “The generation of our parents and grandparents” – he writes: “experienced mass killings, starvation and diseases during the World War 2. Our grand grandfathers were butchered in the tranches of the First World War and, poignantly, those who had survived the war were decimated by the outbreak of the Spanish flu in Ireland and Great Britain. At the same time in Eastern Europe, dysentery and typhus mowed down 200 thousand Polish people between 1918-1920.

I personally take Covid19 very seriously. The high mortality rate at my age is scary and it does not matter for me whether I have got any underlying health condition. Luckily, I do not. I am very fit for my age group, but I hate knowing how menacing and deadly Covid19 can be. I hate the thought that it may attack me or anyone so treacherously and so brutally that it can end our life. I had planned to run half marathon in Las Palmas early this year, but it has been rescheduled for November 2020. In April, I had stopped training for it and only recently have I started running 5-10 miles a day.

The strangest thing is that we in Europe have long thought all deadly pandemics as a thing of the past: dead and buried deep together with all the fears of contagious diseases which our grandparents feared so much. This is probably the reason why It is difficult for us to accept that what had haunted and killed past generations is awaken and is mercilessly haunting us again”

Poetry by Zdzislaw Malkiński