Adam Zagajewski again...

That's Sicily

At night we sailed past shadowed,
enigmatic shores. Far off, the huge leaves
of hills swayed like a giant's dreams.
Waves slapped the boat's wood,
a warm wind kissed the sails,
stars rushed, helter-skelter,
to tell the history of the world.
That's Sicily, someone whispered,
three-cornered island, owl's breath,
handkerchief of the dead.


One small, whole poem, representative of so much of what I've loved reading this collection. Having flown over Italy, having seen maps, having climbed to the deck of a ferry at five o'clock in the morning to see a red sky rising over this ancient island, having in mind Whitman's "handkerchief of the lord, a scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped," I think I see what the poem suggests. Regardless, I am full of gratitude for these ten lines.

Letter #2: Clare Cavanaugh

Dear Clare,

One of my wife’s best friends was in Ecuador when we got married. She brought us back a hand-made, clay bowl painted in deep browns and white and black. Though it chipped a bit two years ago when movers carried a new sofa through our living room, the bowl still lives in our basement, all the way from Ecuador. For me, your translations are gifts like that, brought back with care from countries where I have never been.

When Robert Pinsky visited my school three years ago to speak at the dedication of our new library, he spent some time during the day with a group of students. When asked about his translations of Dante, Pinsky talked about the way all writing is a kind of translation in which a writer draws language from a wordless realm. As I understood it, Pinsky was saying, in essence, that Dante was the first translator of The Inferno. He also described his hope that his translations might help new textures and surfaces emerge.

Though I know no Polish, and therefore cannot access the original language used by poets like Adam Zagajewski and Wislawa Szymborska, your renderings of their poems have given me access to the truths and the beauty these poets, and others, have brought into the realm of language. Below are some of my favorite lines and images from your translations of Adam Zagajewski’s Mysticism for Beginners, poems you brought back from Poland with such care. Thank you, Clare, for these gifts.

With Gratitude,

Peter Gaines


from “September”

…September kissed the hills
and treetops like someone leaving
on a long trip who realizes only at the station
that he’s lost his keys.


from “The Three Kings”

For four years a cold wind blew,
but the star was yellow, sewn carelessly to a coat
like a school insignia.


from “Referendum”

Fog infiltrated lips and lungs
as if the air were sobbing,
going on about itself, about the cold dawn,
how long the night is,
and how ruthless stars can be.


from “For M.”

Soldiers walked along the street, but the war
was already over and rifles bloomed.


from “Tierra del Fuego”

Sometimes the sun’s coin dims
and life shrinks so small
that you could tuck it
in the blue gloves of the Gypsy
who predicts the future
for seven generations back


from “Albi”

The traveler greets his new setting,
hoping to find happiness there,
perhaps even his memory.


from “The House”

The old piano dozing in the parlor,
a hippo with black and yellow teeth.


from “Planetarium”

On the ceiling stars like dancers
made appearances, comets hurried
on their errands to the far ends of the earth.


from “Long Afternoons”

…tell me how to cure myself
of silence.


from “The Room I Work In”

I drink from a small spring,
my thirst exceeds the ocean.


from “On Swimming”

Swimming is like prayer:
palms join and part,
join and part,
almost without end.