#adam zagajewski

[apoemaday]

Try to Praise the Mutilated World

by Adam Zagajewski tr. 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 heading 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 grey feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.

#poetry #adam zagajewski #tr. clare cavanagh #try to praise the mutilated world

[petaltexturedskies]

Adam Zagajewski, tr. by Clare Cavanagh, from "try to praise the mutilated world”

#june #typography #adam zagajewski

[firstfullmoon]

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

#w #poetry #adam zagajewski #winter strikes my heart

[havingapoemwithyou]

a flame by Adam Zagajewski

#Adam Zagajewski #poetry #poem #winter

[woundgallery]

Adam Zagajewski (translated by Clare Cavanagh

#adam zagajewski #poetry #love poems #lightning transformation you #text

[apesoformythoughts]

“Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June's long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. 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.”

— Adam Zagajewski: “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” [transl. Clare Cavanagh]

#adam zagajewski #poetry

[orpheuslament]

going to Try to Praise the Mutilated World anyone want anything

#and the gentle light that strays and vanishes #AND RETURNS!!!! #dante.txt #adam zagajewski

[gennsoup]

Fields of lavender surround the cloister-- armies of bees and the young spring buzz above them, and, slowly, golden heedfulness is born.

Adam Zagajewski, Sénanque

#Adam Zagajewski #Senanque #Without End #lavender #spring #nature #bees #Polish literature #quotes #quotes blog #literary quotes #literature quotes #literature #book quotes #books #words #text #poetry #poetry quotes

[whisperthatruns]

Gate

Do you love words as a shy magician loves the moment of quiet after he’s left the stage, alone in a dressing room where a yellow candle burns with its greasy, pitch-black flame? What yearning will encourage you to push the heavy gate, to sense once more the odor of that wood and the rusty taste of water from an ancient well, to see again the tall pear tree, the proud matron who presented us aristocratically with its perfectly formed fruit each fall, and then fell into mute anticipation of the winter’s ills? Next door a factory’s stolid chimney smoked and the ugly town kept still, but the indefatigable earth worked on beneath the bricks in gardens, our black memory and the vast pantry of the dead, the good earth. What courage does it take to budge the heavy gate, what courage to catch sight of us again, gathered in the little room beneath a Gothic lamp – mother skims the paper, moths bump the windowpanes, nothing happens, nothing, only evening, prayer; we wait . . . We lived only once.

Adam Zagajewski, tr. Clare Cavanagh (text found here)

#adam zagajewski #clare cavanagh #gate #poetry #translation

[seemoreandmore]

there’s always a little joy, and even beauty lies close at hand, beneath the bark of every hour, in the quiet heart of concentration -Adam Zagajewski, from “Three Angels”

#adam zagajewski

[kitchen-light]

Cities at daybreak are no one's, and have no names. And, I, too, have no name, dawn, the stars growing pale, the train picking up speed.

Adam Zagajewski, from his poem “At Daybreak”, translated by Renata Gorczynski, Benjamin Ivry & CK Williams, from “Selected Poems”, published by Faber and Faber, 2004

#adam zagajewski #quotes #poetry #words #found* #space

[apoemaday]

Don’t Allow the Lucid Moment to Dissolve

by Adam Zagajewski

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

#poetry #adam zagajewski #don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve #tr. renata gorczynski

[luna-y-libertad]

La música que escuché contigo

era más que música, y la sangre

fluyendo por nuestras arterias

era mucho más que sangre,

pero la alegría que sentimos

era una auténtica alegría,

y si puedo agradecérselo

a alguien, se lo agradezco ahora,

antes de que sea demasiado tarde

y demasiado silencioso.

Adam Zagajewski

#Adam Zagajewski

[firstfullmoon]

Yes, I think it is a good description: poetry amplifies, exaggerates, puts emphasis on things and feelings, on thoughts and dreams that go almost unnoticed in everyday life. Amplifies them and stops them, makes them immobile so that we can freeze contemplating them. And it’s probably totally impossible to live like that, to have so much attention for detail in our days, which fly over our heads like supersonic jets. On the other hand, no, it’s not a good description in the sense that actually our true life is more present in poetry (art) than in these hasty days. Poetry gives us back life as it really is, as it should be experienced, in its grandeur and in its misery. So perhaps we should be saying not that “poetry is exaggeration” but “life as we know it is diminished, a bit crippled,” regarded through the lens of litotes. Life is understatement; poetry doesn’t exaggerate.

— Adam Zagajewski, from “Slight Exaggeration: An Interview with Adam Zagajewski”

#w #interview #adam zagajewski #maybe all pain in the world requires poetry #attention is the beginning of devotion

[havingapoemwithyou]

transformation by Adam Zagajewski tr. Clare Cavanagh

#Adam Zagajewski #poetry #poem #september

[chrisengel]

Adam Zagajewski

#death of a pianist #adam zagajewski