A Sweet Unrest

A pocketful of disposable razors wrapped in a parking ticket

April 26th is Poem In Your Pocket Day here in the US.  I've always liked the idea of it, of people carrying around a few cherished, crumpled lines maybe to share but truthfully just because they're needed.  To borrow a phrase from someone we'll be hearing more from in a minute, I really am this foolish.

I've been saving this one especially for today, from this.

The Great Poet Has Gone by Adam Zagajewski

Thinking of C.M.

 

Of course nothing changes
in the ordinary light of day,
when the great poet has gone.
Gray sparrows and dapper starlings
still squabble heatedly
in the tops of ancient elms.

When the great poet has gone,
the city doesn't miss a beat, the metro
and the trams still seek a modern Grail.
In the library a lovely girl
looks in vain for a poem that could explain it all.

At noon the same noise surges,
while quiet concentration reigns at night,
among the stars- eternal agitation.
Soon the discotheques will open,
indifference will open-
although the great poet has died.

When we part for a long while
or forever from someone we love,
we suddenly sense there are no words,
we must speak for ourselves now,
there's no one to do it for us
- since the great poet is gone.

                            (translated by Clare Cavanagh) 

I've got a great song for you too- it's written by Mark Spence, author of the first poem in the collage above, and performed by him and his band Royal Chant.

Royal Chant - Hesitation Kills

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)

A Quick Poem

 

I've been consumed by all the little and big things here, reading and thinking plenty but not able to make any sense of any of it, not yet.  How about a quick poem?

A Quick Poem by Adam Zagajewski 

I was listening to Gregorian chants 
in a speeding car
on a highway in France.
The trees rushed past.  Monks' voices
sang praises to an unseen God
(at dawn, in a chapel trembling with cold).
Domine, exaudi orationem meam, 
male voices pleaded calmly
as if salvation were just growing in the garden.
Where was I going?  Where was the sun hiding?
My life lay tattered
on both sides of the road, brittle as a paper map.
With the sweet monks
I made my way toward the clouds, deep blue,
heavy, dense,
toward the future, the abyss,
gulping hard tears of hail.
Far from dawn.  Far from home.
In place of walls - sheet metal.
Instead of a vigil - a flight.
Travel instead of remembrance.
A quick poem instead of a hymn.
A small, tired star raced
up ahead
and the highway's asphalt shone,
showing where the earth was,
where the horizon's razor lay in wait,
and the black spider of evening
and night, widow of so many dreams. 

                                    (translated by Clare Cavanagh)