Impassive
And the impassive Garonne flowed in silence
like an Indian brave in plumes of the sun.
No one saw, no cameras,
only an azure eye, absolute ignorance,
serenity, glory, bliss.
A letter opener
lay on the wooden table,
a handful of nuts, a purple plum
that shone violet
as in a Spanish canvas,
a worn-out plastic ballpoint
with dark streaks of poetry.
Is it a memory
or the promise of new life?
—Adam Zagajewski (1945- )
from Unseen Hand
translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanaugh
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2011)
COMMENTARY
The men whose utterances emerge from the divine-human encounter are well aware that the language erupting in them is as much divine as it is human. Eric Voegelin, Collected Works, vol 28, 180.
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