ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI
45
pay rent and ended up on the streets, in the freezing cold, to die.
Do you regret this? Prelates in heavy cassocks? Do you regret slides
and orchestras that played Viennese waltzes in parks? Health resorts in
which Goethe bowed to the emperor? Do you regret the thugs who
allowed Mozart to die? The unshaven monks who sang Gregorian
chants at dawn in a cool chapel? Do you regret the unfathomable mul–
tiplicity of races, denominations, and human types, the crowd that
walked slowly down the street like an enormous herd of animals crossing
the prairie? Do you regret sunrises over battlefields? The slaughter of
Austerlitz and Jena? What is it you regret? The distraught weeping of fi–
ancees who have understood that they will remain old maids with dry
cheeks? Do you regret the conflagrations of cities, conflagrations that
consume a house a second just the way Gargantua devoured a pork
roast? Disputes about universals? Abelard's shame? The grotesqueries of
parliaments with their vain deputies that can be bought
ofT,
trafficking in
every imaginable belief and ready to change their political, national and
even sexual colors every week if only someone would ofTer them a little
more gold? Do you regret a God no one has seen? Theologians writing
long letters that are never answered? What is it exactly that you regret?
Small nations, living with their comical hopes and tending their
ridiculous, complicated grammars that no one would ever be able to
master? Inept uprisings and sentimental campfire songs? Parliamentary
sessions disrupted by drunken hecklers? The cruelties of Prussian officers?
The last minutes in the life of a suicide, who lost everything in stock–
market machinations?
Winter covered the poverty of the cities. Scarlet bullfinches appeared
in January. Ferries sunk in the rivers. The Titanic sunk like an iron.
Military orchestras practiced for concerts hours at a time. Many unneces–
sary things. Crusades. Contests. Tons of deception everywhere. To main–
tain our standing on the appropriate hierarchical level, to mend worn
stockings, patch up trousers, polish shoes to a spit shine, so that no one
would think we were out of money, in decline. It is better not to eat
for a week than to show a hole in the stocking. Forsythias bloomed in
the spring. Starlings appeared. Servants stood on the windowsills and
washed windows. Soldiers got leaves . Snow melted and rivers swelled
dangerously, yellow waves beached trunks of toppled trees, dead gophers,
birds' nests. Rains washed sidewalks. In artistic cafes people discussed ni–
hilism.
The boredom of history: always the past tense, the eyelid of perfec–
tive verbs, the eyelashes of adverbs. Mercy for those who lived.
Pioneers headed for the West. Always in the past tense. Sunsets,
bloody; predicting defeat, the lost battle. Then a light moon floated
over the rivers and ponds, reflecting in every puddle. Time passes through
