POEMS
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI
Circus
Look, your longing swung from the trapeze.
The clown is you as well and the tame tiger
who begs for mercy calls someone
to
mind.
Even the tin-pot music
has its charm; it seems
you're starting
to
make peace
with your times (everyone else has,
why not me?-you say).
So why then does the circus tent
rise above an ancient graveyard?
Castle
The guards cried out incomprehensibly
in a mountain tribe's guttura l dialect.
Venetian windows opened and closed.
Long limousines arrived and left.
Someone seemed
to
be dying in the palace.
A black banner unfurled,
then drew back like a grass snake's tongue.
Swallows, psalms, grew frantic with worry...
But who could it have been,
since the castle had been empty for so long,
given up to bats and irony?
Still everything seemed
to
indicate
that somebody was dying in the palace.
One couldn't overlook
the signs of life.
Editor's Note: Excerpted from
Without End: New and Selected Poems
by Adam
Zagajewski. Translations by Clare Cavanagh, Renata Gorczynski, Benjamin Ivry, and
C.
K. Williams. Forthcoming, January
2002,
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copy–
right by Adam Zagajewski. Translation copyright by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
