The Poetry Stash: 04Mar2024

Cruel by Adam Zagajewski

Today’s poem is “Cruel” by Adam Zagajewski from the collection Without End, New and Selected Poems. The book is available for purchase here.

Cruel by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Renata Gorczynski, Benjamin Ivry, and C. K. Williams

for Joseph Czapski

In the Parc de Saint-Cloud, birds sang.
Alone in that vast, narcissistic forest
that looks out on Paris,
I pondered your words:
The world is cruel; rapacious,
carnivorous, cruel.

I circled the Parc de Saint-Cloud, from east to west,
west to east,
I strolled through the leafless
chestnuts, bowed to the dark, bowing cedars,
heard pinecones cracked
by sparrows and wrens.
No beast of prey in the park,
other than time, just then changing
from winter to spring, stripped,
an actor flinging his costume away,
in the cold wings backstage.

Cruel? I thought. Here is the killer,
abetted by police and by priests—
even you’ve indulged it,
the protagonist
of your paintings. But is there a choice?
A world milder and softer?
Trees more exquisite, cedars
with still darker needles, more sumptuous
feasts, moments of meditation
thrusting to the core of knowledge?
Is there a kinder time, gentler, eager
to give back those we’ve lost, to restore us
to ourselves, pure, young?

A rose sky; tight, narrow ribbons of cloud.

The brown walls of prisons, hospitals, courts,
wailing corridors with no end,
moments of contemplation riven, imperiled
by terror, anxiety, lies.

I circled the Parc de Saint-Cloud, faster, faster,
winter over, spring not yet.
In the park, barren, bereft of its king,
I kept saying it, “Cruel,” my only witnesses
lizards and birds.
Then, through a dense mist the white sun boiled:
I was impaled by sharp barbs of bliss.

Prompts:

1.	Begin with “I circled…”
2.	Begin with “Cruel?” I thought…”
3.	Take a walk outside. Make a list of what you notice. Make a list of what you’re thinking about. Draft a poem combining the two lists.
4.	Draft a poem in which at least one stanza contains all questions.

5. Photo by Daniel John. Use this image as a writing prompt.

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