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    Unseen Hand: Poems
    Unseen Hand: Poems
    Unseen Hand: Poems
    Ebook99 pages1 hour

    Unseen Hand: Poems

    By Adam Zagajewski and Clare Cavanagh

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    About this ebook

    One of the most gifted poets of our time, Adam Zagajewski is a contemporary classic. Few writers in poetry or prose have attained the lucid intelligence and limpid economy of style that are the trademarks of his work. His wry humor, gentle skepticism, and perpetual sense of history's dark possibilities have earned him a devoted international following. This collection, gracefully translated by Clare Cavanagh, finds the poet returning to the themes that have defined his career—moving meditations on place, language, and history. Unseen Hand is a luminous meeting of art and everyday life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateOct 28, 2014
    ISBN9781466884250
    Unseen Hand: Poems
    Author

    Adam Zagajewski

    Adam Zagajewski (1945–2021) was born in Lvov, Poland. His books include Tremor; Canvas; Mysticism for Beginners; Without End; Eternal Enemies; Unseen Hand; Asymmetry; Solidarity, Solitude; Two Cities; Another Beauty; A Defense of Ardor; and Slight Exaggeration—all published by FSG. He lived in Chicago and Kraków.

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    • 3/5
      Translated from Polish (by the incredible Cavanagh, of course) yet his words fall with a fluidity and natural, unforced style that really speaks to me. I really liked "Impossible" and "Corridor."

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Unseen Hand - Adam Zagajewski

    I.

    NEW HOTEL

    KRAKOW

    In February the poplars are even slimmer

    than in summer, frozen through. My family

    spread across the earth, beneath the earth,

    in different countries, poems, paintings.

    Noon, I’m on Na Groblach Square.

    I sometimes came to see my aunt

    and uncle here (partly out of duty).

    They’d stopped complaining about their fate,

    the system, but their faces looked like

    an empty secondhand bookshop.

    Now someone else lives in that apartment,

    strange people, the scent of a strange life.

    A new hotel was built nearby,

    bright rooms, breakfasts doubtless comme il faut,

    juices, coffee, toast, glass, concrete,

    amnesia—and suddenly, I don’t know why,

    a moment of penetrating joy.

    CAFÉ

    BERLIN

    The café in a strange city bore a French writer’s

    name. I sat reading Under the Volcano,

    with less enthusiasm now. Time to be healed,

    I thought. I’d probably become a philistine.

    Mexico was remote and its enormous stars

    did not shine for me. The day of the dead dragged on.

    Holiday of metaphors and light. Death played the lead.

    A few people at neighboring tables, various fates.

    Prudence, Sorrow, Common Sense. The Consul, Yvonne.

    It was raining. I felt a little happiness. Someone entering,

    someone leaving, someone had finally discovered the perpetuum mobile.

    I was in a free country. A lonely

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