Poetry: Autumn by Adam Zagajewski
Autumn
By Adam Zagajewski
(Translated by Renata Gorczynski)
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.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI, a Ukrainian-born, Polish-language poet, essayist and novelist, will deliver the 33rd annual Oscar Silverman Memorial Reading at 8 p.m. Friday in 250 Baird Hall, UB North Campus. In 2002, he moved back to Krakow following two decades in exile in Paris. He currently teaches on the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought. This poem is from "Without End: New and Selected Poems" (2002) published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
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