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.

it can wait

What will 
a sixty-eight-year-old man do
with a four-year-old son
in a country 
more humid than
wherever  he's ever been?
See how he sits now
alone on the porch
sipping coffee
his young wife gone.
He must be thinking
of something 

or waiting.

palimpsest

Perhaps the reason why we are not meant 
to live longer than we have to is the burden 
the weight of years, in incremental memories
layering one on top of another.  

Imagine
the skin of the world seen by your mind's eye
and the thousands more associations
only you can conjure.  How at times they come

and go only when they so pleases.  Such that
in mid of something else entirely, you remember 
the minute details of her and of the scene
surrounding her.  In a vividness that could

outlast the very strength of you, finally
grown weary with all the years.







 

the things we refuse

We are what we choose
and what we refuse
                         -Edith Tiempo




How many times have we talked about
childhood, work, people, the things
we've seen, heard, read.  Their names 
now familiar.  Little snippets repeated overtime
some with more details than truly remembered

or insight.  From the last time
the night was nippy, the stroll easy, or 
the last two bottles taking their time.
I tell you again the stories I do not read

something to do with romance, tall promises 
of love.  Also, family.  Although certainly
there are no escaping these, you laugh,
the world, being, simply these.

cape town

if you come to visit a city, do so not as a tourist.  
else there will be many things you will miss.  

the tourist is always asked to see
the many beautiful things,  

of course he is also asked to see
the beautiful only.

tourists

strolling through the night market road,
they found her shawls
one carnation, one ocean hue




















 
 

two skies

east, daylight is rising.  dew and drops glisten from this dawn's heavy rain.  but west, on the other window--my writing seat is in the middle---gray.  in half an hour i will call the secretary, i will keep away half the day.  i have been gone too long from many places: how we can only exist once at a time.  sun spills on the floor.  the sound of an airplane leaving or arriving: perhaps both.