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Adam Czerniawski

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From an Album

I
With age, my dear, nostalgia thickens
he said
I’ve many snapshots
I’ll have to sort them out one day
I also prefer to talk with you in private
the crowd is buzzing in my ears

She had on an evening dress
a green pattern
in the garden
before the concert in a manor
perched strategically on the cliff
of seaside Kent
Foul weather and fog for days
now suddenly the sun
sheathed in the salt air
blazed in her hair
He said
I haven’t a camera
I shan’t preserve this moment

II
that it is possible to return to a place, but impossible to turn                                               back in time

that every place is saturated with remembrance for someone,                                             yet of no
concern to someone else walking in the past

that when we experience a moment of bliss, we want to dwell                                                                                         in
   it forever,
though at the cost of how many days still to be known

that a cobweb of feeling and memory washed by imagination                                                                   will suffice

III
If I were a poet, instead of banal maxims
I should have here a very fine poem
something is crumbling in my hand
it’s been called an autumn leaf
it’s also called a hand and despair

Translated by Iain Higgins

Page(s) 90-91

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