Adam Zagajewski
Eternal Enemies: Poems
TO MAYA, toujours
I
STAR
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.
EN ROUTE
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 IN THE CAR
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.
THE SWALLOWS OF AUSCHWITZ
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?
STOLARSKA STREET
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.
GENEALOGY
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
TO FRITZ STERN
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.