I have remembered how much I love Charles Simic's translations of Vasko Popa. here's an old writing exercise I developed based on this poem from the Quartz Pebble cycle.

The entire cycle is like this poem, crunchy & weird. It's one of my favourite cycles in the world - you can read Anne Pennington translating more of them here (though I don't love her translations as much as I do Simic's): https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/the-quartz-pebble/

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VASKO POPA

The Little Box

The little box grows her first teeth
And her little length grows
Her little width her little emptiness
And everything she has
The little box grows and grows
And now inside her is the cupboard
She was in before
And she grows and grows and grows
And now inside her is the room
And the house and town and land
And the world she was in before
The little box remembers her childhood
And by wishing really hard
Becomes a little box again
Now inside the little box
Is the whole world all teeny-weeny
Easy to slip in your pocket
Easy to steal easy to lose
Look after the little box

This translation is by Anne Pennington and revised by Francis R. Jones, and was published in Vasko Popa’s Complete Poems 1953-87 (Anvil, 1997, 2011). It is updated from the version by Aleksander Stefanovic published in Modern Poetry in Translation No.1. It is published here by permission of Carcanet Press.

https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/the-small-box/#:~:text=The%20little%20box%20grows%20her,And%20everything%20she%20has

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