ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI 

"Codeword"

____________________

Look, your life too is becoming

the oil in a lamp on whose surface

the weak blue flame of homeland wanders.

That country, like depression, will steal

your youth and turn it into a codeword,

will take your rapture and give grief;

that country, that clock that won’t run,

black band on a sleeve,

that country where souls are in storage

and bodies are no one’s because death

is paid in advance and it will come,

too early, at dawn, with its forehead of an ape,

too early, the clouds of morning, too early,

a prayer, kiss, the helpless children

fallen too early, and instead of orchids

the ashes of mountain September, cold fog,

the consoling lie, booze and not hell.

Translated by C. K. Williams and Renata Gorczynski