We were the barbarians.
You trembled before us in your palaces.
You awaited us with pounding hearts.
You commented on our languages:
they apparently consist of consonants alone,
of rustles, whispers, and dry leaves.
We were those who lived in the dark forests.
We were what Ovid feared in Tomi,
we were the worshippers of gods with names
you could not pronounce.
But we too knew loneliness
and fear, and began longing for poetry.
I did not know at the time what I came to know later as a man, as a character, I am both weak and strong. My strength tends to be frail; it can betray me. I am capable of submitting to an outside pressure, conformity, the mood of the moment, someone else’s enthusiasm, my own uncertainty; and it’s true, always after a time I am capable of shaking off the bad influence. But with all certainty, I do not belong to those phenomenally resistant, arrogantly sovereign natures. Perhaps I am strong, but my strength is welded to weakness, doubt, dislike of quick decisions. I belong to those who err.
Connsequently, I also have an appropriately affectionate attitude to becoming, maturing. Those who are genetically independent might certainly disdain the element of development, time, maturing, because at any moment, regardless of challenge, they are ready to show themselves to the world in all their perfection. Time for them is nothing more than the shutter click of a camera, an instant of unveiling their unchanging substance. For me, on the other hand, time—the time of maturing, redressing an error, arriving at a clear understanding of one thing or another—is something vital, indispensable. Maturing—in my case—is never ultimate and finished. I will always be ready to commit a new error, and then I will try to understand it and correct it. Usque ad finem.Adam Zagajewski, Two Cities, traducido del polaco al inglés por Lillian Vallee
11.50pm. Algo de nieve se acumula afuera: mis primeras navidades en el 30308. El gato en silencio, medio dormido. Ella cambia los discos: Miles Davis, Springsteen, The Roots, Tori Amos, algún disco de electrónica o dance. Nos pasamos el teléfono de vez en cuando: un juego llamado Word Scramble. Un vino que no me encanta. Ella lee a la Condé. Yo a Zagajewski.
Una brisa. Un copo de nieve que se deshace en la bufanda.
"Speak softly", escribe el polaco, "you're older than the one / you were so long ; you're older / than yourself", y entonces añade, "and yet you still don't know what absence, poetry and gold are."
