Adam Zagajewski: Eternal Enemies: Poems

I returned to you years later,

gray and lovely city,

unchanging city

buried in the waters of the past.

I’m no longer the student

of philosophy, poetry, and curiosity,

I’m not the young poet who wrote

too many lines

and wandered in the maze

of narrow streets and illusions.

The sovereign of clocks and shadows

has touched my brow with his hand,

but still I’m guided by

a star by brightness

and only brightness

can undo or save me.

1. WITHOUT BAGGAGE

To travel without baggage, sleep in the train

on a hard wooden bench,

forget your native land,

emerge from small stations

when a gray sky rises

and fishing boats head to sea.

2. IN BELGIUM

It was drizzling in Belgium

and the river wound between hills.

I thought, I’m so imperfect.

The trees sat in the meadows

like priests in green cassocks.

October was hiding in the weeds.

No, ma’am, I said,

this is the nontalking compartment.

3. A HAWK CIRCLES ABOVE THE HIGHWAY

It will be disappointed if it swoops down

on sheet iron, on gas,

on a tape of tawdry music,

on our narrow hearts.

4. MONT BLANC

It shines from afar, white and cautious,

like a lantern for shadows.

5. SEGESTA

On the meadow a vast temple—

a wild animal

open to the sky.

6. SUMMER

Summer was gigantic, triumphant—

and our little car looked lost

on the road going to Verdun.

7. THE STATION IN BYTOM

In the underground tunnel

cigarette butts grow,

not daisies.

It stinks of loneliness.

8. RETIRED PEOPLE ON A FIELD TRIP

They’re learning to walk

on land.

9. GULLS

Eternity doesn’t travel,

eternity waits.

In a fishing port

only the gulls are chatty.

10. THE THEATER IN TAORMINA

From the theater in Taormina you spot

the snow on Etna’s peak

and the gleaming sea.

Which is the better actor?

11. A BLACK CAT

A black cat comes out to greet us

as if to say, look at me

and not some old Romanesque church.

I’m alive.

12. A ROMANESQUE CHURCH

At the bottom of the valley

a Romanesque church at rest:

there’s wine in this cask.

13. LIGHT

Light on the walls of old houses,

June.

Passerby, open your eyes.

14. AT DAWN

The world’s materiality at dawn—

and the soul’s frailty.

Music heard with you

at home or in the car

or even while strolling

didn’t always sound as pristine

as piano tuners might wish—

it was sometimes mixed with voices

full of fear and pain,

and then that music

was more than music,

it was our living

and our dying.

In the barracks’ quiet,

in the silence of a summer Sunday,

the swallows’ shrill cry.

Is this really all that’s left

of human speech?

The small crowd by the American consulate

ripples like a jellyfish in water.

A young Dominican strides down the sidewalk

and passersby yield piously.

I’m at home again, silent as a Buddhist.

I count the days of happiness and fretting,

days spent seeking you frantically,

finding just a metaphor, an image,

days of Ecclesiastes and the Psalmist.

I remember the heatstruck scent of heather,

the smell of sap in the forest by the sea,

the dark of a white chapel in Provence,

where only a candle’s sun glowed.

I remember Greece’s small olives,

Westphalia’s gleaming railroads,

and the long trip to bid my mother goodbye

on an airplane where they showed a comedy,

everyone laughed loudly.

I returned to the city of sweet cakes,

bitter chocolate, and lovely funerals

(a grain of hope was once buried here),

the city of starched memory—

but the anxiety that drives wanderers,

and turns the wheels of bicycles, mills, and clocks,

won’t leave me, it remains concealed

in my heart like a starving deserter

in an abandoned circus wagon.

I’ll never know them,

those outmoded figures

— the same as we are,

yet completely different.

My imagination works to unlock

the mystery of their being,

it can’t wait for the release

of memory’s secret archives.

I see them in cramped classrooms,

in the small provincial towns

of the Hapsburgs’ unhappy empire.

Poplars twitch hysterically

outside the windows

while snow and rain dictate

their own orthography.

They grip a useless scrap of chalk

helplessly in their fists,

in fingers black with ink.

They labor to reveal the world’s mystery

to noisy, hungry children,

who only grow and scream.

My schoolmaster forebears fought

to calm an angry ocean

just like that mad artist

who rose above the waves

clutching his frail conductor’s wand.

I imagine the void

of their exhaustion, empty moments

through which I spy

their life’s core.

And I think that when I too

do my teaching,

they gaze in turn at me,

revising my mutterings,

correcting my mistakes

with the calm assurance of the dead.

Karmelicka Street, a sky blue tram, the sun,

September, the first day after vacation,

some have come home from long trips,

armored divisions enter Poland,

children off to school dressed in their best,

white and navy blue, like sails and sea,

like memory and grapes and inspiration.

The trees stand at attention, honoring

the power of young minds that haven’t yet

known fire and sleep and can do what they want,

nothing can stop them

(not counting invisible limits).

The trees greet the young respectfully,

but you — be truthful — envy

that starting out, that setting off

from home, from childhood, from the sweet darkness

that tastes of almonds, raisins, and poppy seeds,

you stop by the store for bread

and then walk home, unhurried,

whistling and humming carelessly;

your school still hasn’t started,

the teachers have gone, the masters remain,

distant as summer, your sleep sails through the clouds

across the sky.

Thankless street — little dry goods stores

like sentries in Napoleon’s frozen army;

country people peer into shop windows and their reflections

gaze back at dusty cars;

Long Street trudging slowly to the suburbs,

while the suburbs press toward the center.

Lumbering trams groove the street,

scentless perfume shops furrow it,

and after rainstorms mud instead of manna;

a street of dwarves and giants, creaking bikes,

a street of small towns clustered

in one room, napping after lunch,

heads dropped on a soiled tablecloth,

and clerics tangled in long cassocks;

unsightly street — coal rises here in fall,

and in August the boredom of white heat.

This is where you spent your first years

in the proud Renaissance town,

you dashed to lectures and military drills