in memory of Adam Zagajewski
So many friends have you seen pass,
maestro of the poetic eulogy.
Now it’s my turn. Can you hear me?
We don’t know.
Why didn’t we spend more time together,
talk more, call each other?
I thought you’d live to be old,
very old, like your father.
In your last poem it is January, winter,
not your season.
You were fond of springtime, summer,
the song of the blackbirds.
One June evening on a stroll through Planty Park
you said to me, “They’re still singing.”
The other day I woke up and heard
a blackbird’s sobs, drowned out
by sharp croaking. I thought
of you and was anguished.
—Renate Schmidgall
(translated from the German by T Bhambry)
Renate Schmidgall is one of the foremost German translators of Polish literature as well as a poet in her own right; her bilingual poetry collection was brought out by Biblioteka Telgte in 2018. Her translator, T. Bhambry, winner of the Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize, translates from Polish and German for The Paris Review, Asymptote, and others.
