I won't tell all regardless.
But even when I'm at a loss to define
the essence of freedom
I know full well the meaning
of captivity.
21 June 1945 - 21 March 2021
Adam Zagajewski
PLANS, REPORTS
First there are plans then reports This is the language we know how to communicate in Everything must be foreseen Everything must be confirmed later What really happens doesn’t attract anyone’s attention
Czesław Miłosz
ENCOUNTER
We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness.
And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand.
That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive, Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.
O my love, where are they, where are they going The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.
Translated by Czesław Miłosz and Lillian Vallee
Wisława Szymborska
END OF THE CENTURY
It was supposed to be better than the previous ones, our XXth century.
It will no longer have time to prove it,
its years are counted, gait unsteady,
breath short.
Too much has already happened
which was not supposed to happen,
and that which was to come
did not occur.
It had the promise of spring
and happiness, among other things.
Fear was supposed to leave the mountains and valleys.
Truth was supposed to reach its destination
more quickly than the lie.
Some misfortunes were supposed
never again to occur,
for example, war
and famine and so on.
The helplessness of the helpless,
trust and other such things
were supposed to be respected.
Whoever wanted to rejoice in the world,
now faces an impossible task.
Stupidity is not funny.
Wisdom is not joyful.
Hope
no longer is this young girl
etcetera, alas.
God was supposed finally to believe in a man
who is good and strong
but the good and the strong
continue to be two different people.
How to live – someone has asked me in a letter,
someone of who I was going to ask
the same.
Again and as always,
as one can see above,
there are no questions more urgent
than questions that are naïve.
Translated by Grażyna Drabik and Austin Flint
Adam Zagajewski
REFUGEES
Bent under burdens which sometimes
can be seen and sometimes can’t,
they trudge through mud or desert sands,
hunched, hungry,
silent men in heavy jackets,
dressed for all four seasons,
old women with crumpled faces,
clutching something – a child, the family
lamp, the last loaf of bread?
It could be Bosnia today,
Poland in September ‘39, France
eight months mater, Germany in ’45,
Somalia, Afghanistan, Egypt.
There’s always a wagon or at least a wheelbarrow
full of treasures (a quilt, a silver cup,
the fading scent of home),
a car out of gas marooned in a ditch,
a horse (soon left behind), snow, a lot of snow,
too much snow, too much sun, too much rain,
and always that special slouch
as if leaning toward another, better planet,
with less ambitious generals,
less snow, less wind, fewer cannons,
less History (alas, there’s no
such planet, just that slouch).
Shuffling their feet,
they move slowly, very slowly
toward the country of nowhere,
and the city of ono one
on the river of never.
Translated by Clare Cavanagh
Adam Zagajewski
READING MIŁOSZ
I read your poetry once more,
poems written by a rich man, knowing all,
and by a beggar, homeless,
an emigrant, alone.
You always wanted to go
beyond poetry, above it, soaring,
but also lower to where our region
begins, modest and timid.
Sometimes your tone
transforms us for a moment,
we believe – truly –
that every day is sacred,
that poetry – how to put it? –
makes life rounder,
fuller, prouder, unashamed
of perfect formulation.
But evening arrives,
I lay my book aside,
and the city’s ordinary din resumes –
somebody coughs, someone cries and curses.
Translated by Clare Cavanagh
A poem is like a human face—it is an object that can be measured, described, cataloged, but it is also an appeal. You can heed an appeal or ignore it, but you can’t simply measure its meter. You can’t gauge a flame’s height with a ruler.
— Adam Zagajewski
Adam Zagajewski
A WANDERER
I enter the waiting room in a station.
Not a breath of air.
I have a book in my pocket,
someone’s poems, traces of inspiration.
At the entrance, on benches, two tramps and a drunkard
(or two drunkards and a tramp).
At the other end, an elderly couple, very elegant, sit
staring somewhere above them, toward Italy and the sky.
We have always been divided, Mankind, nations,
waiting rooms.
I stop for a moment,
uncertain which suffering I should
join.
Finally, I take a seat in between
and start reading. I am alone but not lonely.
A wanderer who doesn’t wander.
The revelation
flickers and dies. Mountains of breath, close
valleys. The dividing goes on.
Translated by Renata Gorczyńska
Adam Zagajewski
ABOUT MY MOTHER
I could never say anything about my mother;
how she repeated, you’ll regret it one day,
when I’m not around anymore, and how I didn’t believe
in either “I’m not” or “anymore,” how I liked watching as she read bestsellers,
always turning to the last chapter first,
how in the kitchen, convinced it wasn’t
her proper place, she made Sunday coffee,
or, even worse filet of cod,
how she studied the mirror while expecting guests,
making the face that best kept her
from seeing herself as she was (I take
after her in this and other failings),
how she went on at length about things
that weren’t her strong suit and how I stupidly
teased her, for example, when she
compared herself to Beethoven going deaf,
and I said, cruelly, but you know he
had talent, and how she forgave it all
and how I remember that, and how I flew from Houston
to her funeral and couldn’t say anything
and still can’t
Translated by Clare Cavanagh
Adam Zagajewski
ON SWIMMING
The rivers of this country are sweet
as troubadour’s song,
the heavy sun wanders westward
on yellow circus wagons.
Little village churches
hold a fabric of silence so fine
and old that even a breath
could tear it.
I love to swim in the sea, which keeps
talking to itself
in the monotone of a vagabond
who no longer recalls
exactly how long he’s been on the road.
Swimming is like a prayer:
palms join and part,
join and part,
almost without end.
Translated by Clare Cavanagh
Adam Zagajewski
FRUIT
– for Czesław Miłosz
How unattainable life is, it only reveals
its features in memory,
in nonexistence. How unattainable
afternoons, ripe, tumultuous, leaves
bursting with sap; swollen fruit, the rustling
silks of women who pass on the other
side of the street, and the shouts of boys
leaving school. Unattainable. The simplest
apple inscrutable, round.
The crowns of trees shake in warm
currents of air. Unattainably distant mountains.
Intangible rainbows. Huge cliffs of clouds
flowing slowly through the sky. The sumptuous,
unattainable afternoon. My life,
swirling, unattainable, free.
Translated by Renata Gorczyńska and C. K. Williams
In Zagajewski’s best poems, he has succeeded in making the space of the imagination connect with experience; things seen and heard and remembered in all their limits and sorrow and relished joy have the same power for him as things conjured. – Colm Tóibín (The Guardian, 2004)
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