“The day is mild, the light is generous.”
One Sunday in summer
I saw the green coffins: two hundred and eighty-two
out of those eight thousand.
Solid part of the shadow,
empty image of what was once
Srebrenica, eyes that catch at it slide off,
see nothing.
Now I see nothing.
I reach, with my eyes, for the spade,
I go back to darkness.
And I go back to you for the cry demanded of me,
as though the road and the cry
were a ray of light curling in search
of some future alphabet. As though the cry were you,
voice, walking along:
not a single cry, and everything is a cry.
I go back to the darkness, Bashkim,
because you have asked me to explore
what secret geography
runs through the lines I now write.
So I shoulder my spade,
put on my miner’s helmet,
switch on the light-beam of the psalms,
and at the first bump, underground,
it’s you I find, reading:
a hole in the map, and the only thing to fill it
is the guessed-at hesitation and compassion
of your eyes. What is that,
down there? I go down four more paces,
to the depths of that poetry
of haste: mapping it like a cartographer,
delighting in being able to finish off the poem
a friend had asked you for to build a dialogue
with writers everywhere and find yourself face to face
with mothers embracing
the green coffins around which
from Vukovar to Srebrenica
all voices are dumb
the entire voice
burns in a poem
the question of sonship
pending.
What does it mean what do I mean what do you mean
when we cross when you cross when they cross
the market place and Krakov
rises up naked, as window, page,
are opened wide:
the day was mild, the light was generous.
The German on the cafe terrace
held a small book on his lap.
I caught sight of the title:
“Mysticism for beginners”.
But you are reading Zagajewski
without knowing a word of Polish
you translate translations
like one who planes with his gaze the angles
of houses where people live, where they call to their children
to get out of bed
not to leave the table until they have finished
that books are holy
to be eaten to be bathed in to be tucked up in to be sheltered by
while children clamour for eyes like beggars –
for eyes! –
to console themselves,
you are busy blunting the sharp edges of houses
by translating lines of translated poetry
while the source recedes ever farther
and you tell me it doesn’t matter, catalans, it doesn’t matter:
we translate into the language of a country with no shape
where our old outlines are every day erased
shrunk, pierced, ceaselessly deformed
how may we translate them dilute ourselves survive?
I clamour for fresh eyes with beggar’s hands –
eyes to let me see!
With no shape, do you understand it?
In the morning when you get up
you don’t yet know whether today you’ll have
feet to put shoes on and in the mirror your tongue
stuttering slurred uncertain and nevertheless
risen from the country
that is and is not
nevertheless nevertheless nevertheless
a voice without voice is chanting litanies
repeating translated words:
I caught sight of the title:
“Mysticism for beginners”
Suddenly I understood that the swallows
patrolling the streets of Montepulciano
with their shrill whistles
and the hushed talk of the timid travellers
from Eastern, so-called Central Europe
and the white herons standing – yesterday? the day before? –
like nuns in fields of rice,
and the dusk, slow and systematic
erasing the outlines of mediaeval houses
and olive trees on little hills,
abandoned to the wind and heat,
and the head of the Unknown Princess
that I saw and admired in the Louvre
and the head as well of my own princess
I know her, I call to her
and she does not want to turn round
and she calls to me in her turn
while she turns over in bed
you’ll do it now take my picture.
Sarah will make
the three angels laugh
now you’ll say here you are, blind man, you’re dry,
now
Ruth comes has taken off her undergarment
and has one breast pierced
with a ring in the shape of a gold sickle
which dangles and chimes
and the unknown woman
has come to our rendez-vous with three faces
and the third one is called fearful impatience
love is a small bundle of letters
spends the night between your breasts
empties out everything, does you honour and
patience is infinite or nothing
translating Zagajewski the poem
wanting hoping imploring that the poem
may turn out to be what can be translated
not the remainder that which clamours beyond your reach
and causes foreigners to be born spewed up on the beach
without papers under the golden light
without paper or ink or alphabet
only the weeping that learns to be a voice
the weeping the absent one gives birth to
which causes a mother to be born
beauty my blessed life
blessed beauty
newborn child you already have a shape
all at once
and you have a name
a woman’s name,
Unknown woman, Sarah, Ruth,
you are the voice of a lineage
from which a mother has been born
with no papers with the name
the slippery weeping kicking shape
rebellious incredulous clarity
root absent lineage
in which we grow afforest graft ourselves are badly pruned
in whose branches
vowels and consonants roost
with prayers cradle-songs art
art alone breaks the circle
and the hushed talk of the timid travellers
from Eastern, so-called Central Europe
and the white herons standing – yesterday? the day before? –
like nuns in fields of rice,
and the dusk, slow and systematic,
erasing the outlines of mediaeval houses
and olive trees on little hills
abandoned to the wind and heat,
and the head of the Unknown Princess
that I saw and admired in the Louvre,
and stained-glass windows like butterfly wings
sprinkled with pollen,
and the little nightingale practising
its speech beside the highway,
and any journey, any kind of trip,
any journey meaning also the journeys
you’ve never been on, never will go on
only art breaks the circle
that wishes to shut out the murdering of moslems
in the crime of Srebrenica
making you choose the pious silence or else obscene
banalisation in which we are all born
as foreigners spewed up on a beach with no papers
with nothing to write your name
Europe is the Dutch government resigning
it is the great Mazoviecki resigning
it is thousands of writers playing at being neutral
while Dobrica Cosic writes the foundations
of ethnic cleansing,
it is resignation this process of erasing people’s names
and falling to one’s knees on the beach
of this poem, Bashkim,
which cannot utter in its entirety the failure
to translate in time a single word, failing
to know when it is time
at the right time when you have to dig with your eyes
and give birth to your mother
uprooted
In a bookshop in Krakov
I read a title: “Mysticism for beginners”
I understood all at once that the image
of the green coffins embraced by mothers, in the newspaper,
and the invitation from Bashkim
who carries that geography tattooed in his eyes
and my country that has no shape
and the poem by Zagajewski
that I cannot translate
and the permanent present of Srebrenica
and that PEN conference at the end of the century
that was the setting in which to be able to speak of the failure
so as not to lose breath, speech,
and the little sickle over the field of stars
and the laughter of three angels
and the old bundle of letters
that you hold at night between your breasts
and to be unborn, to untranslate
Europe back to the source
so as to be able to rise up with them
to give birth to one’s own mother
and I call her
and she doesn’t want to turn round
and any journeys, any kind of trip,
are only mysticism for beginners,
the elementary course, prelude
to a test that’s been
postponed.
NOTE: The lines in italics are an English translation by Clare Cavanagh from the original Polish of the poem ‘Mysticism for Beginners’ by Adam Zagajewski.