Adam Zagajewski

1. without baggage To travel without baggage, sleep in the train on a hard wooden bench, forget your native land, emerge from small stations when a gray sky rises and fishing boats head to sea. 2. in belgium It was drizzling in Belgium and the river wound between hills. I thought, I'm so imperfect. The trees sat in the meadows like priests in green cassocks. October was hiding in the weeds. No, ma'am, I said, this is the nontalking compartment. 3. a hawk circles above the highway It will be disappointed if it swoops down on sheet iron, on gas, on a tape of tawdry music, on our narrow hearts. 4. mont blanc It shines from afar, white and cautious, like a lantern for shadows. 5. segesta On the meadow a vast temple— a wild animal open to the sky. 6. summer Summer was gigantic, triumphant— and our little car looked lost on the road going to Verdun. 7. the station in bytom In the underground tunnel cigarette butts grow, not daisies. It stinks of loneliness. 8. retired people on a field trip They're learning to walk on land. 9. gulls Eternity doesn't travel, eternity waits. In a fishing port only the gulls are chatty. 10. the theater in taormina From the theater in Taormina you spot the snow on Etna's peak and the gleaming sea. Which is the better actor? 11. a black cat A black cat comes out to greet us as if to say, look at me and not some old Romanesque church. I'm alive. 12. a romanesque church At the bottom of the valley a Romanesque church at rest: there's wine in this cask. 13. light Light on the walls of old houses, June. Passerby, open your eyes. 14. at dawn The world's materiality at dawn— and the soul's frailty.

Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve Let the radiant thought last in stillness though the page is almost filled and the flame flickers We haven't risen yet to the level of ourselves Knowledge grows slowly like a wisdom tooth The stature of a man is still notched high up on a white door From far off, the joyful voice of a trumpet and of a song rolled up like a cat What passes doesn't fall into a void A stoker is still feeding coal into the fire Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve On a hard dry substance you have to engrave the truth

Autumn is always too early. The peonies are still blooming, bees are still working out ideal states, and the cold bayonets of autumn suddenly glint in the fields and the wind rages. What is its origin? Why should it destroy dreams, arbors, memories? The alien enters the hushed woods, anger advancing, insinuating plague; woodsmoke, the raucous howls of Tatars. Autumn rips away leaves, names, fruit, it covers the borders and paths, extinguishes lamps and tapers; young autumn, lips purpled, embraces mortal creatures, stealing their existence. Sap flows, sacrificed blood, wine, oil, wild rivers, yellow rivers swollen with corpses, the curse flowing on: mud, lava, avalanche, gush. Breathless autumn, racing, blue knives glinting in her glance. She scythes names like herbs with her keen sickle, merciless in her blaze and her breath. Anonymous letter, terror, Red Army.