In the library a lovely girl looks in vain for a poem that could explain it all

Over the weekend I visited one of my favorite places in all the world and came home with a new book which I love. It's him and Merwin in the place of honor on my bedside table.

New Hotel by Adam Zagajewski

     Krakow

In February the poplars are even slimmer
than in summer, frozen through.  My family
spread across the earth, beneath the earth,
in different countries, poems, paintings.

Noon, I'm on Na Groblach Square.
I sometimes came to see my aunt
and uncle here (partly out of duty).
They'd stopped complaining about their fate,

the system, but their faces looked like
an empty secondhand bookshop.
Now someone else lives in that apartment,
strange people, the scent of a strange life.

A new hotel was built nearby,
bright rooms, breakfasts doubtless comme il faut,
juices, coffee, toast, glass, concrete,
amnesia--and suddenly, I don't know why,
a moment of penetrating joy. 

               (Translated by Clare Cavanagh)

Comments

[FiL]

Krakow is magical. And memorial. Though I never lived there, my mother did. Through her stories, and those of a larger history, I think the city and I have a sort of odd, permanent link. The poem captures that eerily well...

Hi Greer! Long time no...anything. I hope all is well with you & yours. :)

[Greer]

FiL!!!!!

I've never been there but I hope to someday. It's awfully good to hear from you, you know...