#adam zagajewski

[havingapoemwithyou]

Ode to softness by Adam Zagajewski

[seekingstars]

BOOGIE-WOOGIE - Adam Zagajewski

[seemoreandmore]

At midnight you said, Come out,

and in the dark there we saw the sky of August

explode with its stars.

Eternal, unconfined, night's pale sheen

trembled above us.

- Adama Zagajewski fragment z O Północy / Ziemia Ognista/

[petaltexturedskies]

Adam Zagajewski, from "Try to Praise the Mutilated World” (tr. by Clare Cavanagh)

[evenasmallcough]

ODE TO SOFTNESS

Mornings are blind as newborn cats. Fingernails grow so trustfully, for a while they don’t know what they’re going to touch. Dreams are soft, and tenderness looms over us like a fog, the cathedral bell of Krakow before it cooled.

- Adam Zagajewski, Tremor

[gennsoup]

But now the rain falls silent, the gardens resume their chanting. They sing from the depths of their brimming green hearts, arbors and trees, the core of their leaves.

Adam Zagajewski, The Creation of the World

[firstfullmoon]

Adam Zagajewski, “A Flame,” trans. Renata Gorczynski and Clare Cavanaugh

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Photograph by Gregorz Momot

A so-called Brocken Spectre is seen in the Tatra mountains in Zakopane, Poland. A Brocken Spectre is a rare optic phenomenon that can be observed in mountains when an observer standing on higher altitude can see his own shadow cast onto a cloud at a lower altitude below him. The head of the figure is often surrounded by rings of coloured light.

* * * *

“Try to Praise the Mutilated World” by Adam Zagajewski (translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh):

Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You’ve seen the refugees going nowhere, you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars. Praise the mutilated world and the gray feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.

(From Without End: New and Selected Poems by Adam Zagajewski, translated by several translators. Translation © 2002, and used by permission of, Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

[via “Alive On All Channels”]