Reading parts of "The Cyberiad" like that make me wonder what it was that Lem wrote in Polish and how much work Kandel must've done in order to translate it to English while capturing the spirit. I wonder how much difference there is from mere transliteration. Also, I wonder what it would take to get him to finish the Lem canon, for, so far, the only English language versions of "Solaris," be they movies or books, have passed through at least one other language (Russian or French, respectively) before getting translated to English.
Kandel also wrote some stuff of his own-- I found "Captain Jack Zodiac" pretty memorable.
Also, fellow kibologist Matt McIrvin has a superb round-up and reviews of Lem's work as far as he knows it, which is farther than most: http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/vitrifaxrevs.html
Yeah, I was thinking that exact same thing re: the difficulty of translation. The original author has a ton of fun with language...kind of like the troubles of translating "Goedel Escher Bach".
I wouldn't be surprised if there could be some "cheating" here and there...tweaking of the poem's stated requirements into something more plausible in the target language. Still, it's some fantastic stuff.
Yeah, I suspect that the requirements were tweaked, but that just gives me more appreciation for Kandel, who didn't shy away from what must've been some tremendously creative efforts.