Long Afternoons by Adam Zagajewski
I got to see my poetry pals yesterday afternoon. It was short notice and I don’t have a printer so I couldn’t select some recently posted poems. Instead I brought 180 more extraordinary poems for every day, selected by Billy Collins, which Ryan gave me for Christmas. I was randomly flipping through it, looking for names I recognized and I landed on this one. We talked about it for a good 30 minutes, and it was a pleasant surprise that it had so many layers. It was translated by Clare Cavanagh.
Long Afternoons
By Adam Zagajewski
Those were the long afternoons when poetry left me.
The river flowed patiently, nudging lazy boats to sea.
Long afternoons, the coast of ivory.
Shadows lounged in the streets, haughty manikins in shopfronts
stared at me with bold and hostile eyes.
Professors left their schools with vacant faces,
as if the Iliad had finally done them in.
Evening papers brought disturbing news,
but nothing happened, no one hurried.
There was no one in the windows, you weren’t there;
even nuns seemed ashamed of their lives.
Those were the long afternoons when poetry vanished
and I was left with the city’s opaque demon,
like a poor traveler stranded outside the Gare du Nord
with his bulging suitcase wrapped in twine
and September’s black rain falling.
Oh, tell me how to cure myself of irony, the gaze
that sees but doesn’t penetrate; tell me how to cure myself
of silence.
what is your interpretation of this poem?