Zagajewski

It Comes to a Standstill


The city comes to a standstill
and life turns into still life,
it is as brittle as plants in a herbarium.
You ride a bicycle which doesn't
move, only the houses wheel by,
slowly, showing their noses, brows,
and pouting lips.  The evening becomes
a still life, it doesn't feel like existing,
therefore it glistens like a Chinese lantern
in a peaceful garden.  Nightfall, motionless,
the last one.  The last word.  Happiness
hovers in the crowns of the trees.
Inside the leaves, kings are asleep.
No word, the yellow sail of the sun
towers over the roofs like a tent abandoned
by Caesar.  Pain becomes a still life and despair
is only a still life, framed
by the mouth of one passerby.  The square
keeps silent in a dark foliage of birds'
wings.  Silence as on the fields of Jena
after the battle when loving women
look at the faces of the slain.

trns. by Clare Cavanagh

Catalog