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I saw the
sea and oranges. First
snow-ladies and gentlemen, a moment's silence please. Breaking
news: Bach woke again and sings. Time kept
its word (it always does). Reading
Milosz by an open window. The
swallows' sudden trill. Chapels
beneath the linden trees in summer; bees pray. "Carpe
diem." He seized the day, but when he checked his prey
that evening, he
found night. - You really
like libraries that much? Carrots,
onions, celery, prunes, almonds, powdered sugar, four
large apples,
green are best (your love letter). Don't get
carried away. To say that Orthodox liturgies
lack humor! The
hospital-pale invalids in gowns beside a tanned, smiling surgeon. Why do you
always write about cities? If only we
read poetry as carefully as menus in expensive restaurants ... "Periagoge"
- Plato's notion of internal transformation. The bulging Place
de la Bastille - perhaps another Bastille is hiding underneath. Peonies like
peasant girls in church. "How
can I miss you when you won't go away?" (country song). Varieties of
longing; the professor counted six. Sign on a
bus: AIR-CONDITIONED. Day trips- Wieliczka, Auschwitz. The homeless
clinging to radiators at a railroad station in December. Vermeer's
painting with a woman sitting safely on the stoop and knitting:
behind her a dark interior, in front, the street and light. Irreconcilable.
The sun
hurts, says the boy in the park. B.,
reproachfully: I lived there, you know, and I'd never say there was too much of
Lvov! Everything
returns. Inspiration wanes and returns. Desire. Comedy and
tragedy; Simone Weil sees only tragedy. Red poppies
and black snow. The smile of
a woman, no longer young, reading on the train to Warsaw. Oh, so
you're the specialist in high style? Delphi, full
of tourists, open to mysteries. The sea was
angry at midnight: furious, to be frank. And the
Holocaust Museum in Washington-my childhood, my wagons, my rust. May evening:
antennas in the rain. Down
Kanonicza Street screaming you sonofabitch. Dolphins
near Freeport: their favorite, ancient motion, like the symbol scholars use
for iambs. A theater
too tiny to hold Bergman's film. Escape from
one prison to the next. After the
announcement "zuruckbleiben" at a subway stop in Berlin, a quiet
moment-the sound of absence. Swifts in
Krakow, stirred by summer, whistle loudly. A weary verb
goes back to the dictionary at night. Mama always
peeked at the novel's last page-to see what happened ... Truth is
Catholic, the search for truth is Protestant (W. H. Auden). Some experts
predict that by the twenty-first century's end people will no longer
die. Open up. Pay the
phone and gas, return the books, write Clare. In the plane
after dinner two pudgy theologians compare their pensions. 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
Holderlin 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 |