She was beautiful. She should have died then, like the other men and women,
vanished without a trace, gone without elegies, like so many others,
like the air, but she lived a long time, in daylight, in the sun,
in the daily air, the oxygen of ordinary Krakow.
Sometimes she couldn’t understand what it meant to be beautiful.
The mirror kept still, it didn’t know the philosophical definitions.
She didn’t forget those other times, but hardly ever
mentioned them. Once only she told this story:
her beloved cat wouldn’t stay in the ghetto, twice
it went back to the Aryan side at night. Her cat
didn’t know who Jews were, what the Aryan side meant.
It didn’t know, so it shot to the other side like an arrow.
Ruth was a lawyer and defended others. Maybe that was why she lived so long.
Because there are so many others, and they need defending.
Prosecutors multiply like flies, but defenders are few.
She was a good person. She had a soul. We seem to know
what that means.
MANET
The worried artist smokes a cigar,
he seems dissatisfied,
nothing turns out today.
It’s breakfast in the studio,
a lemon sliced as in Dutch paintings.
But look, the model, a young man
in a black frock coat, is in splendid form:
resting against a table, he looks at us
with the arrogant gaze
best suited to happy creatures
whose only purpose
is to seem, to shine, and who
are otherwise untroubled.
They know they’ll live forever—
though without memory.
A TRIP FROM LVOV TO SILESIA IN 1945
And again the rusty cars trundle slowly
the locomotive wheezes
and repeats “A” and “A” and “A”
The freight car wheels clatter
then a dreary silence falls
the train stands for a long time in the yellow grass
heavy military transports pass it by
This train does not have right of way
it’s not the firstborn son
It’s been switched to a side track near Krakow
far from the city, from Wawel Castle and the Market
far from the old university
and its elegant professors
It set out on my father’s name day
and Mrs. Kolmer brought a fedora cake
to the station, it didn’t last long
Behind us lay mass graves
and homeless suffering
Now we are homeless
and there is only this moment
and glistening spiderwebs and hawthorn bushes
I don’t know what music is
I don’t know the map I haven’t read Leśmian
I can’t begin to guess that school
with its Prussian bricks will smell
of Bismarck brown, drafting triangles and scars
or that our four-person family
will be as perfect as the finest square
but then will fall like Byzantium
and that Saint Francis will walk
past us but incognito alas
and that ideas will turn up in their Sunday best
just like Mazovian or Silesian folk dancers
in starched skirts
and high polished shoes
It’s October and the golden trees
obey the wind and are afraid of hail
and rooks (rooks are so black)
and I still know nothing
I don’t even know that I’ll fall ill in a moment
and will be saved along the way
by Doctor Kochanowski
HIGHWAY
I was maybe twenty.
In the junkyard under the viaduct built
by Hitler I hunted for relics from that war, relics
of the iron age, bayonets and helmets of whichever
army, I didn’t care, I dreamed of great discoveries—
just as Heinrich Schliemann once
sought Hector and Achilles in Asia Minor,
but I found neither bayonets
nor gold, only rust was everywhere,
rust’s brown hatred; I was afraid
that it might penetrate my heart.
WAKE UP
Wake up, my soul.
I don’t know where you are,
where you’re hiding,
but wake up, please,
we’re still together,
the road is still before us,
will be our star.
PUBLIC SPEAKING CONTEST
Or when she told us, for the tenth time maybe,
about the public speaking contest that, as a young
law student, she’d won, nearly won, even though
she faced serious competition, and like everyone else,
was stunned that a woman had won, nearly won,
and not a man, a future judge or lawyer;
she came out the best, nearly the best, though technically
speaking someone else took home first prize—
and that was her greatest success,
and when we listened to her story, later, much later,
ironically, a little bored, thinking: “you’re still
caught up in a competition, invisible this time,
like most such occupations,
and you want us to give you the laurels
that they refused you then,”
and how I wish I could hear
her tell the story again
about the contest she nearly won,
and in which, I think, after decades
of her memory’s unceasing labor,
she finally carried the day.
PENCIL
Angels no longer have time for us;
they labor now for unborn generations—
hunched over school notebooks
they write, they scribble, then correct
complex diagrams
for future happiness,
with a thick yellow pencil
clenched between their teeth—
like first-graders
under the eye of a teacher
smiling benignly.
KRZYS MICHALSKI DIED
Krzys Michalski died suddenly.
Of all the people I know, he’s the only one
who might have seemed slightly immortal.
Combative, towering over others. Fantastically intelligent.
He did so many good things. When you thought of him,
the word success emerged from the cave where
it ordinarily vegetates. Success, true success.
Not requiem or other touching knickknacks.
He always seemed to fly business class,
and stayed only in the very best hotels.
He made friends with the pope, with presidents,
but never stopped being a philosopher, that is,
an invisible man, someone who listens closely.
Who slips occasionally into the cave of thought.
A difficult combination, impossible.
But only the impossible can be marvelous.
In a well-cut black jacket, slender,
dressed like a traveler who prepares to set out
on a great journey and doesn’t want to betray anyone
wherever he’s going.
BERTOLT BRECHT IN ETERNITY
Your grave lies right in Berlin’s heart,
in that elite, philosophical cemetery
where they won’t bury just anyone, where
Hegel and Fichte rest like rusty anchors
(their ships sink into the abyss of textbooks).
Your bizarre errors, your wors
hip of doctrine
lie beside you like axes and spears in Neolithic graves,
equally useful, equally necessary.
You chose East Germany, but also kept
an Austrian passport just in case.
You were a cautious revolutionary—but can an oxymoron
save the world?
You wrote a poem “To Those Born Later”—you hoped the future
too would yield to your persuasion. But the future has passed.
Those born later drift indifferently through the graves—like tourists in museums
who look mainly at the labels under paintings.
It’s April, a cool and sunny day, black shadows cling
to the tombstones, as if detectives were the true immortals.
RUE ARMAND SILVESTRE
Armand Silvestre, a Parnassian, once renowned,
now a forgotten poet and conteur, so Wikipedia says;
a street in no way different from other arteries
planted with mannerly trees, beneath which
sparrows continuously danced the Lambeth Walk and shimmy.
Graced by a Franprix shop, a day care, a pharmacy, a barber,
a red-faced butcher, always smiling, as if
quartering meat were his greatest delight,
an elementary school and two bad restaurants.
That was our street, rather long—unfortunately,
it lacked a proper conclusion,
like certain films, and our building, an enormous structure,
too large, called Le Tripode, the tripod,
as in Delphi, but no Pythia stood over it,
no prophetic mists rose, there was no magic
(only brief moments, which didn’t fade),
and we didn’t know what would be, we lived in darkness
and in hope, as others live, inhabitants
of Dresden or Warsaw, who each night
take their watches from their wrists
and in their dreams are as free as swimmers
in eternity’s Atlantic.
NOCTURNE
Sunday afternoons, September: my father listens
to a Chopin concerto, distracted
(music for him was often just a backdrop
for other activities, work or reading),
but after a moment, he puts the book aside, lost in thought;
I think one of the nocturnes
must have moved him deeply—he looks out the window
(he doesn’t know I’m watching), his face
opens to the music, to the light,
and so he stays in my memory, focused,
motionless, so he’ll remain forever,
beyond the calendar, beyond the abyss,
beyond the old age that destroyed him,
and even now, when he no longer is, he’s still
here, attentive, book to one side,
leaning in his chair, serene,
he listens to Chopin, as if that nocturne
were speaking to him, explaining something.
ORANGE NOTEBOOK
That drunk in the Planty Gardens looked a little like Arthur
Schopenhauer, he was sound asleep, snoring.
Last night, new ideas, notes, music.
Morning— a wasteland.
A whole life is contained in every day. It must
squeeze through the day, like a young cat awkwardly exiting
a tree.
Le petit bleu. When I first arrived in Paris, they’d
just eliminated the pneumatic post. The pneuma of Paris flickered out.
Three Caesars. Above a dirty little river. Rooks.
The kingdom of the dead is beautiful.
Praxiteles’ Hermes. We’re helpless vis-à-vis perfection.
Countless flashes. The face of Hermes. Tourists are souls
doing penance.
One closes, another opens.
A June storm blesses the train. A pheasant lands heavily
in a wheat field, like the first helicopter.
Aphorisms, fine, but how long can you be right?
Józef Czapski frequently advised me: when you’re having a bad day, paint
a still life.
Express train, June, a calm evening, the light retreats
peaceably. Deer beside the forest. Happiness.
Dark poems. Summer mornings, gleaming.
COUSIN HANNES
Hannes was a pastor in Zurich.
He took me once, at my request,
to Joyce’s grave, and Thomas Mann’s,
and laughed at me for being a necrophiliac,
a literary graveophile, and he also liked
to joke that I knew everything
from books, though I still
hadn’t been anywhere, seen anything.
He thought my passion for writing
(incomprehensible) poems might
pass some day and I’d take up
ideas, as intelligent people do;
he was good-hearted, he helped distant relatives
and strangers, still his own children
viewed him quite critically.
Fridays and Saturdays he was off-limits:
he would write Sunday’s homily
and volumes of theology would mount
on the wooden floor of his study
like black sphinxes in the desert.
He died suddenly, still quite young,
and left so many matters unexplained,
and they still hover over us,
day and night.
OUR NORTHERN CITIES
Our northern cities doze on the plains
Their walls, thick walls, know everything about us
They are prisons, usually quite good-natured
We walk beneath mighty ceilings
The wind mutters in the leafless branches of trees
Our homes. Our northern cities,
their heavy clocks hanging on towers
like pumpkins in autumn gardens
Our hospitals in grim edifices, our courts,
dreary post offices built of red brick
firemen in silver helmets
Our mute streets, still waiting
Northern cities are introverts
They seem mighty, indestructible
but are in fact rather shy
We’re born in them and we die
We like the scorched landscapes of the south,
deep blue seas etched
with white ribbons of waves, brown rocks,
tamarisk and fig trees, smelling of sweet fruit,
but we’re chained to northern cities
and can’t betray them,
we’re forbidden to abandon
our dark cities, their long winters,
their dirty underwear of melting snow,
shame, sorrow, exhaustion
We must speak in their name,
keep watch, call out.
ALSO BY ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI
POETRY
Tremor: Selected Poems
Canvas
Mysticism for Beginners
Without End: New and Selected Poems
Eternal Enemies
Unseen Hand
ESSAYS
Solidarity, Solitude
Two Cities
Another Beauty
A Defense of Ardor
Slight Exaggeration
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam Zagajewski was born in Lvov in 1945. His previous books include Tremor; Canvas; Mysticism for Beginners; Without End; Eternal Enemies; Unseen Hand; Solidarity, Solitude; Two Cities; Another Beauty; A Defense of Ardor, and Slight Exaggeration. He lives in Krakow. You can sign up for email updates here.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Clare Cavanagh is a professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Northwestern University. Her most recent book, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. She is currently working on a
n authorized biography of Czeslaw Milosz. She has also translated the poetry of Wislawa Szymborska. You can sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on Adam Zagajewski, click here.
For email updates on Clare Cavanagh, click here.
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
I
NOWHERE
POETS ARE PRESOCRATICS
SUMMER ’95
MARATHON
SUITCASE
MR. WLADZIU
MANDELSTAM IN THEODOSIA
FULL-BLOWN EPIC
THE EARTH
KINGFISHER
ABOUT MY MOTHER
GRAŻYNA
WE KNOW WHAT ART IS
VENICE, NOVEMBER
NORTHERN SEA
PLAYING HOOKY
RACHMANINOFF
II
CHILDHOOD
1943: WERNER HEISENBERG PAYS A VISIT TO HANS FRANK IN KRAKOW
CONVERSATION
CHACONNE
SENIOR DANCE
SHELF
JULY
UNDERGROUND TRAINS
NIGHT, SEA
THAT DAY
SANDALS
REHEARSAL
WHITE SAILS
RADIO STREET
MY FAVORITE POETS
III
MOURNING FOR A LOST FRIEND
JUNGLE
RUTH
MANET
A TRIP FROM LVOV TO SILESIA IN 1945
HIGHWAY
WAKE UP
PUBLIC SPEAKING CONTEST
PENCIL
KRZYS MICHALSKI DIED
BERTOLT BRECHT IN ETERNITY
RUE ARMAND SILVESTRE
NOCTURNE
ORANGE NOTEBOOK
COUSIN HANNES
OUR NORTHERN CITIES
ALSO BY ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND TRANSLATOR
COPYRIGHT
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014