the unsame world

How can we live in a same world?
I made the mistake of looking out 
the clear glass of the front door 

and smiled (did I really?)
           
that the man who saw it took it
as sign he could shovel.
My shovel was leaning on the porch

so there was no need of him.

But it was early in the morning
and I was just coming down to tea
and the man was cold, explaining

his deal for something to eat.

The things we could, need to do.
The real things beyond our real.
I didn't carry

cash, what is also called the thin
line between warmth and cold, 
the places where people stood. 

Friday Rain

...and I came home midnight 
after a long meeting and a few
rounds of drinks, in an attempt to
salvage the remains of Friday night.
The both of us laughed over rocks

in glasses, over cigarettes, a band
played in the background and we
watched the lead singer. Young
woman cooing in a husky voice,
wearing elbow length sleeves.

Nice voice, but a virgin. We laughed
swapping stories how we knew
early on it is something to rid of.
To become.
                   I arrived home,

dogs, lamp lights, shower. Three 
things: collage of photos she printed 
from our recent out-of-town trips together; 
a handmade bookmark between 
Szymborska by my bed; she, asleep...

Rain arrived at two in the morning,
seeping through my sleep. I awake
to let in the new dog at the front yard. 
It yelped and raced to shelter itself in.

bamboo wind chime

It hangs now on the doorstep,
this bamboo wind chime with wind
making sounds of water.

It makes a different pottering 
from the rain taking its slow time
this morning.  There is enough

natural light for a day the colour
of clouded glass.  We do 
not take a walk.  We take

patience and leaves of paper 
rubble we call life.  Or the idea of it:
a meeting under a tree,

an afternoon tea, a conversation
like you and I have
all the time in the world.

And, lovely, learn by going where to go

Bright early morning drizzle, a brown mug of freshly brewed local coffee, papers on desk by an open window.  Somewhere in the corner of the front yard, the planted tomatoes are sprouting.  Until the time to go to the still bustling city that tries to keep itself still, to take the morning slow...

The Waking

by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

Eternal Enemies

when the poem about eternal enemies was written, it meant love and time.  how they can never seem to reconcile, except in marriage.  it was a wedding poem, "epithalamium" for isca and sebastian.  this, of course, written and read on a moment of suspension.  for the world-wise/world-weary knows, of course, there may be no eternal yet in marriage; this, of course, again, being conditional.



Epithalamium
             by Adam Zagajewski


Without silence there would be no music.
Life paired is doubtless more difficult
than solitary existence--
just as a boat on the open sea
with outstretched sails is trickier to steer
than the same boat drowsing at a dock, but schooners
after all are meant for wind and motion,
not idleness and impassive quiet.

A conversation continued through the years includes
hours of anxiety, anger, even hatred,
but also compassion, deep feeling.
Only in marriage do love and time,
eternal enemies, join forces.
Only love and time, when reconciled,
permit us to see other beings
in the enigmatic, complex essence,
unfolding slowly and certainly, like a new settlement
in a valley or among green hills.

It begins from one day only, from joy
and pledges, from the holy day of meeting,
which is like a moist grain;
then come the years of trial and labor,
sometimes despair, fierce revelation,
happiness and finally a great tree
with rich greenery grows over us,
casting its vast shadow.  Cares vanish in it.

Syracuse

City with the loveliest name, Syracuse;
don't let me forget the dim
antiquity of your side streets, the pouting balconies
that once caged Spanish ladies,
the way the sea breaks on Ortygia's walls.

Plato met defeat here, escaped with his life,
what can be said about  us, unreal tourists.
Your cathedral rose atop a Greek temple
and still grows, but very slowly,
like the heavy pleas of beggars and widows.

At midnight fishing boats radiate
sharp light, demanding prayers
for the perished, the lonely, for you,
city abandoned on a continent's rim,
and for us, imprisoned in our travels.






by Adam Zagajewski 

copenhagen

Copenhagen is not a real city, he says, reviewing the number of murders and theft, the number of people that is less 

than the population of stricken children in the humid city where we were 
eating eggs benedict in a place that smelled of vanilla.  A waiter named Denmark 

came to pour water.  The name on the tag on the crisp white shirt.  Only in this country, he adds, noticing the name.  I only thought what a happenstance--having known 

such penchant for first names:  a Xhemei, an Angus, a Lucy Pearl, a Lefer, a Lady Goddess,  
a Lady Macbeth, a Sir Lord, a Phil.Mighty, a Douglas McArthur, an Avril Lavigne.

Copenhagen is not a real city, he says again, pointing at more cities and stopping, perhaps
not without a touch, the cities in his Italy.  The man missing his home.

in the long run, the world, the nations, the people, the person

Organ Tuning




Someone was tuning the organ in an empty church.
In a Gothic hall a waterfall boomed.
The voices of the tortured and schoolchildren's laughter
mixed with my vertical breath.

In an empty church someone tuned the organ
and tinkered with the pipes' wild anarchy,
demolished houses, flung thunderbolts, then built
a city, airport, highway, stadium.

If only I could see the organist!
Catch sight of his face, his eyes!
If I could trace the movements of his hands,
I might understand where he's taking us,
us and those for whom we care,
children, animals, shadows.












by Adam Zagawjewski

translated by Clare Cavanagh 

Blake on graying streets

Blake




I watch William Blake, who spotted angels
every day in treetops
and met God on the staircase
of his little house and found light in grimy alleys--

Blake, who died
singing gleefully
in a London thronged
with streetwalkers, admirals, and miracles,

William Blake, engraver, who labored
and lived in poverty, but not despair,
who received burning signs
from the sea and from the starry sky,

who never lost hope, since hope
was always born anew like breath,
I see those who walked like him on graying streets,
headed toward the dawn's rosy orchid.










by Adam Zagajewski

translated by Clare Cavanagh 

time keeping

 there is a kind of peace in running and in being with one's dog.  in spite of all the humidity one tries but cannot avoid.  and later, in the high of noon when every thing is so bright it hurts the eyes.  and every thing else is lazy, and balmy, and not wanting to move.  good to sit on the couch by the window with a glass of water.

(and come friday, a performance for women's month.)


(come saturday, the beginning of the graduate school trimester.)

(tuesday, T to fly over and talk about graphic illustration.)
     

but in the mean time, here.  zagajewski in his so many things breathing in between the said.  the consciousness and the sense of present-ness a construction from memory.  lewyka, the comic(?) banality of the tangible  where "[c]urls of apple peel slide off the table on to the carpet, where they are trodden into a fragrant mush."