And for the first time I am looking in your eyesFor the first time I’m seein’ who you areCan’t believe how much I seeWhen you’re lookin back at meNow I understand why love is ……Love is …… for the first time….. —Wisława Szymborska, from “For The First Time,” Nothing Twice: Selected Poems (Wydawnctwo Literackie, 1997)
Rain falls, the cobbled streets grow black.Little abysses open between the stones. —Adam Zagajewski, from “Evening, Stary Sacz” Eternal Enemies transl. by Clare Cavanagh (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008)
ZWhen it hurts we return to the banks of certain rivers. — Czeslaw Milosz, from “I Sleep A Lot,” The Collected Poems 1931— 1987. (The Ecco Press; First Edition edition 1988)
Tell me what’s the difference / between hope and waiting / because my heart doesn’t know / It constantly cuts itself on the glass of waiting / It constantly gets lost in the fog of hope ― Anna Kamieńska , “DIfference,” Astonishments. (Paraclete Press (MA); First Edition edition July 1, 2007)
To treat every day as a word spoken to us. And yourself – as an answer to the word. – Anna Kamieńska, from “The Notebook: 1965-1972″, Astonishments. (Paraclete Press (MA); First Edition edition July 1, 2007)
He’s freed from his loneliness by the word. Isn’t that the point of poetry? Breaking through the walls of solitude. Poetry is the great S.O.S. of loneliness. — Anna Kamieńska, from “Industrious Amazement: A Notebook,” Poetry; Mar2011, Vol. 197 Issue 6, p503
In love with the earth, always drawn to shore,sending wave after wave—and each diesexhausted, like a Greek messenger. At dawn only whispers reach us,the low murmur of pebbles cast on sand(sensed even in the fishing town’s small square). — Adam Zagajewski, from “The Sea,” Eternal Enemies. Transl. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008)
My distinguishing marksare wonder and despair. — Wisława Szymborska, from “The Sky,” People on a Bridge. (Forest Books; First Edition edition April 1990)
Remember the moments when we were togetherin a white room and the curtain fluttered.Return in thought to the concert where music flared.You gathered acorns in the park in autumnand leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.Praise the mutilated worldand the gray feather a thrush lost,and the gentle light that strays and vanishesand returns. —Adam Zagajewski, from… Continue reading Adam Zagajewski
A blonde girl is bent over a poem. With a pencil sharp as a lancet she transfers the words to a blank page and changes them into strokes, accents, caesuras. The lament of a fallen poet now looks like a salamander eaten away by ants. When we carried him away under machine-gun fire, I believed… Continue reading Zbigniew Herbert
The Vale of Soul-Making 