Adam Zagajewski: Eternal Enemies: Poems

In Gliwice, Victory Street might have led to heaven but stops short, alas.

Will the escalator ever go where it takes us?

From a rushing train we saw fields and meadows — from the forest,

as from dreams, deer emerged.

Marble doesn’t talk to clay (to time).

The salesgirl in a shoe store on the rue du Commerce, Vietnamese,

she tells you kneeling, I come from boat people.

I switched on the shortwave radio: someone sobbing in Bolivia.

Christ’s face in S. Luigi dei Francesi.

One thing is sure: the world is alive and burns.

He read Hölderlin in a dingy waiting room.

Boat people — the only nation free of nationalism.

The spring rain’s indescribable freshness.

Sliced with a knife.

“There are gods here too.”

Fruit bursts.

I ask my father: “What do you do all day?” “I remember.”

Delivery cars on a Greek highway, trademark Metafora.

On the sea’s gleaming surface, a kayak, almost motionless — a compass

needle.

Remember the splendid cellist in a clown’s lounge coat?

At night the lights of a vast refinery — a city where nobody lives.

Why do these moments end so quickly? Don’t talk that way, speak

from within the moments.

Love for ordinary objects, unrequited.

Rowers on a green river, chasing time.

Poetry is joy hiding despair. But under the despair — more joy.

Speak from within.

It’s not about poetry.

Don’t speak, listen.

Don’t listen.

ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI

Eternal Enemies

TRANSLATED BY CLARE CAVANAGH

ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI was born in Lvov, Poland, in 1945. His previous books include Tremor, Canvas, Two Cities, Mysticism for Beginners, Another Beauty, Without End , and A Defense of Ardor —all published by FSG. He lives in Kraków, Paris, and Chicago.

CLARE CAVANAGH is a professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Northwestern University. She has translated numerous volumes of Polish poetry and prose, including the work of Wislawa Szymborska, and is working on a biography of Czeslaw Milosz, to be published by FSG.