16 November 2008

Adam Zagajewski

[from Adam Zagajewski's Eternal Enemies, FSG, 2008]

FSG's blog mentions two of my favorite lines by Adam Zagajewski:

No, ma'am, I said,
this is the nontalking compartment.

from his poem "En Route" and links to audio of the complete poem.

[from "In a Little Apartment"]

the fear and sweet gooseberries of childhood

[a stanza from "Stolarska Street"]

I returned to the city of sweet cakes,
bitter chocolate, and lovely funerals
(a grain of hope was once buried here),
the city of starched memory --
but the anxiety that drives wanderers,
and turns the wheels of bicycles, mills, and clocks,
won't leave me, it remains concealed
in my heart like a starving deserter
in an abandoned circus wagon.

Eternal Enemies: Poems

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