Adam Zagajewski: Eternal Enemies: Poems

“Pain as a Pivotal Experience” and “An Inborn Gift for Synthesizing Unlike Objects” were the topics of other talks, which were received less attentively since afterward eternity was scheduled to perform and an orchestra of swarthy gypsies in snug tuxes played without pausing, without end.

Night is a cistern. Owls sing. Refugees tread meadow roads

with the loud rustling of endless grief.

Who are you, walking in this worried crowd.

And who will you become, who will you be

when day returns, and ordinary greetings circle round.

Night is a cistern. The last pairs dance at a country ball.

High waves cry from the sea, the wind rocks pines.

An unknown hand draws the dawn’s first stroke.

Lamps fade, a motor chokes.

Before us, life’s path, and instants of astronomy.

The storm had golden hair flecked with black

and moaned in a monotone, like a simple woman

giving birth to a future soldier, or a tyrant.

Vast clouds, multistoried ships

surrounded us, and lightning’s scarlet strands

scattered nervously.

The highway became the Red Sea.

We moved through the storm like a sheer valley.

You drove; I watched you with love.

The sun sets behind the market square, and nettles reflect

the small town’s imperfections. Teapots whistle in the houses,

like many trains departing simultaneously.

Bonfires flame on meadows and their long sighs

weave above the trees like drifting kites.

The last pilgrims return from church uncertainly.

TV sets awaken, and instantly know all,

like the demons of Alexandria with swindlers’ swarthy faces.

Knives descend on bread, on sausage, on wood, on offerings.

The sky grows darker; angels used to hide there,

but now it’s just a police sergeant on his departed motorcycle.

Rain falls, the cobbled streets grow black.

Little abysses open between the stones.

I watch William Blake, who spotted angels

every day in treetops

and met God on the staircase

of his little house and found light in grimy alleys—

Blake, who died

singing gleefully

in a London thronged

with streetwalkers, admirals, and miracles,

William Blake, engraver, who labored

and lived in poverty, but not despair,

who received burning signs

from the sea and from the starry sky,

who never lost hope, since hope

was always born anew like breath,

I see those who walked like him on graying streets,

headed toward the dawn’s rosy orchid.

You suddenly surface in a city that no longer is.

You turn up abruptly in a vast city

that isn’t really there.

Three scrawny cats meow.

You notice campaign slogans on the walls

and know that the elections ended long ago,

emptiness was victorious and reigns

alongside a lazy sun.

Tourists wander nonexistent streets,

like Church Fathers — afflicted, alas,

by deepest acedia.

Bathhouse walls are bone-dry.

The kitchen holds no herbs,

the bedroom is sleepless.

We enter homes, gardens,

but no one greets us.

It seems we’re stranded in a desert,

faced by the dry cruelty of sand

— just as in other places

that don’t exist,

the native city

you never knew, will never know.

Even the death camps are lifeless.

Some friends are gone.

Past days have vanished,

they’ve hidden under Turkish tents,

in stasis, in a museum that’s not there.

But just when everything is gone

and only lips move timidly

like a young monk’s mouth,

a wind stirs, a sea wind,

bearing the promise of freshness.

A gate in the wall leans open,

and you glimpse life stronger than oblivion;

at first you don’t believe your eyes—

gardeners kneel, patiently

tending the dark earth while laughing servants

cart great piles of fragrant apples.

The wooden wagons rattle on thick stones,

water courses through a narrow trough,

wine returns to the pitchers,

and love comes back to the homesteads

where it once dwelled,

and silently regains its absolute

kingly power

over the earth and over me.

Look, a flame stirs from the ashes.

Yes, I recognize the face.

Zurbarán painted by turns

Spanish saints

and still lifes,

and thus the objects

lying on heavy tables

in his still lifes

are likewise holy.

TO GEORGIA AND MICHAEL

Noto, a town that would be flawless

if only our faith were greater.

Noto, a baroque town where even

the stables and arbors are ornate.

The cathedral’s cupola has collapsed, alas,

and heavy cranes surround it

like doctors in a hospital

tending the dangerously ill.

Afternoons town teenagers

gather on the main street

and bored stiff, whistle

like captive thrushes.

The town is too perfect

for its inhabitants.

TO BOGDANA CARPENTER

River gleaming in the sun—

river, how can you endure the sight:

low crumpled train cars

made of steel, and in their small windows

dull faces, lifeless eyes.

Shining river, rise up.

How can you bear the orange peels,

the Coca-Cola cans, patches

of dirty snow that

once was pure.

Rise up, river.

And I too drowse in semidarkness

above a library book

with someone’s pencil marks,

only half living.

Rise up, lovely river.

I would have liked to live among the Greeks,

talk with Sophocles’ disciples,

learn the rites of secret mysteries,

but when I was born the pockmarked

Georgian still lived and reigned,

with his grim henchmen and theories.

Those were years of memory and grief,

of sober talks and silence;

there was little joy—

although a few birds didn’t know this,

a few children and trees.

To wit, the apple tree on our street

blithely opened its white blooms

each April and burst

into ecstatic laughter.

This is a poem about the great ships that wandered the oceans

And groaned sometimes in deep voices, grumbling about fog and submerged peaks,

But usually they sliced the pages of tropical seas in silence,

Divided by height, category, and class, just like our societies and hotels.

Down below poor emigrants played cards, and no one won

While on the top deck Claudel gazed at Ysé and her hair glowed.

And toasts were raised to a safe trip, to coming times,

Toasts were raised, Alsatian wine and champagne from France’s finest vineyards,

Some days were static, windless, when only the light seeped steadily,

Days when nothing happened but the horizon, which traveled with the ship,

Days of emptiness and boredom, playing solitaire, repeating the latest news,

Who’d been seen with whom in a tropical night’s shade, embracing beneath a peach-colored moon.

But filthy stokers tirelessly tossed coal into open flaming mouths

And everything that is now already existed then, though in condensed form.

Our days already existed and our hearts baked in the blazing stove,

And the moment when I met you may also have existed, and my mistrust