to the university, still trying clumsily
to seduce yet another naive generation,
to a city now selling
even its own walls, since it sold
its fidelity and honor long ago, to a city
I love mistrustfully
and can offer nothing
except what I’ve forgotten and remember
except a poem, except life.
FRIENDS
My friends wait for me,
ironic, smiling sadly.
Where are the transparent palaces
we meant to build—
their lips say,
their aging lips.
Don’t worry, friends,
those splendid kites
still soar in the autumn air,
still take us
to the place where harvests begin,
to bright days—
the place where scarred eyes
open.
SICILY
You led me across the vast meadow,
the three-cornered Common that is Sicily
for this town that doesn’t know the sea,
you led me to the Syracuse
of cold kisses and we passed
through the endless ocean of the grass
like conquerors with clear consciences
(since we vanquished only ourselves),
in the evening, under a vast sky,
under sharp stars,
a sky spreading righteously
over what lasts
and the lazy river of remembrance.
DESCRIBING PAINTINGS
TO DANIEL STERN
We usually catch only a few details—
grapes from the seventeenth century,
still fresh and gleaming,
perhaps a fine ivory fork,
or a cross’s wood and drops of blood,
and great suffering that has already dried.
The shiny parquet creaks.
We’re in a strange town—
almost always in a strange town.
Somewhere a guard stands and yawns.
An ash branch sways outside the window.
It’s absorbing,
describing static paintings.
Scholars devote tomes to it.
But we’re alive,
full of memory and thought,
love, sometimes regret,
and at moments we take a special pride
because the future cries in us
and its tumult makes us human.
BLIZZARD
We were listening to music—
a little Bach, a little mournful Schubert.
For a moment we listened to the silence.
A blizzard roared outside,
the wind pressed its blue face
to the wall.
The dead raced past on sleds,
tossing snowballs
at our windows.
POETRY SEARCHES FOR RADIANCE
Poetry searches for radiance,
poetry is the kingly road
that leads us farthest.
We seek radiance in a gray hour,
at noon or in the chimneys of the dawn,
even on a bus, in November,
while an old priest nods beside us.
The waiter in a Chinese restaurant bursts into tears
and no one can think why.
Who knows, this may also be a quest,
like that moment at the seashore,
when a predatory ship appeared on the horizon
and stopped short, held still for a long while.
And also moments of deep joy
and countless moments of anxiety.
Let me see, I ask.
Let me persist, I say.
A cold rain falls at night.
In the streets and avenues of my city
quiet darkness is hard at work.
Poetry searches for radiance.
II
THE DICTION TEACHER RETIRES FROM THE THEATER SCHOOL
Tall, shy, dignified
in an old-fashioned way,
She bids farewell to students, faculty,
and looks around suspiciously.
She’s sure they’ll mangle their mother tongue
ruthlessly and go unpunished.
She takes the certificate (she’ll check
for errors later). She turns and vanishes offstage,
in the spotlights’ velvet shadows,
in silence.
We’re left alone
to twist our tongues and lips.
IN A LITTLE APARTMENT
I ASK MY FATHER, “WHAT DO YOU
DO ALL DAY?” “I REMEMBER.”
So in that dusty little apartment in Gliwice,
in a low block in the Soviet style
that says all towns should look like barracks,
and cramped rooms will defeat conspiracies,
where an old-fashioned wall clock marches on, unwearied,
he relives daily the mild September of ’39, its whistling bombs,
and the Jesuit Garden in Lvov, gleaming
with the green glow of maples and ash trees and small birds,
kayaks on the Dniester, the scent of wicker and wet sand,
that hot day when you met a girl who studied law,
the trip by freight car to the west, the final border,
two hundred roses from the students
grateful for your help in ’68,
and other episodes I’ll never know,
the kiss of a girl who didn’t become my mother,
the fear and sweet gooseberries of childhood, images drawn
from that calm abyss before I was.
Your memory works in the quiet apartment — in silence,
systematically, you struggle to retrieve for an instant
your painful century.
THE ORTHODOX LITURGY
Deep voices beg insistently for mercy
and have no self-defense
beyond their own glorious singing — though no one
is here, just a disc spinning
swiftly and invisibly.
One soloist recalls the voice
of Joseph Brodsky reciting his poems
before Americans, unconvinced
by any sort of resurrection,
but glad that somebody believed.
It’s enough — or so we think—
that someone believes for us.
Low voices still sing.
Have mercy on us.
Have mercy on me too,
unseen Lord.
ROME, OPEN CITY
A March day, the trees are still naked, plane trees patiently
await the leaves’ green heat,
churches caked in dust, vermilion, ocher, sienna, and bordeaux,
broad stains of cinnamon.
Why did we stop talking?
In the Barberini Palace fair Narcissus gazes at his own face,
lifeless.
Brown city ceaselessly repeating: mi dispiace.
Brown city, entered by weary Greek gods
like office workers from the provinces.
Today I want to see your eyes without anger.
Brown city, growing on the hills.
Poems are short tragedies, portable, like transistor radios.
Paul lies on the ground, it’s night, a torch, the smell of pitch.
Impatient glances in cafés, someone yells, a small heap of coins
lies on the table.
Why? Why not?
The roar of cars and scooters, hubbub of events.
Poetry often vanishes, leaving only matchsticks.
Children run above the Tiber in funny school cloaks
from the century’s beginning:
nearby, cameras and spotlights. They’re running for a film, not for you.