A Talk with A. Zagajewski
(After reading "A Talk with Friedrich Nietzsche")
--No one tells me anything new so I tell myself
my own story-TSZ: 56, Friedrich Nietzsche
I imagine you writing on a balcony in Paris
You float in freedom which at last you savor
Your words are tall as if on stilts
Moving above the history they try to capture
As the long reach of words moves over you
A fine hand cups your neatly bearded chin
As you try to understand how words catch fire
Your lyric ambiguities fan them as they burn
You know that Celan drowned them in the Seine
For in the end we are betrayed by words
I see you've built this dialogue in stone
And scrawled N's name upon it
Some shallow dream has beguiled you
Into mistaking the witness for the deed
As if guilt were nimble and like a cloak
Might be removed and transferred to another
Better seek the Nazis who rule death's lovers
Whose visions are blades burnished in ovens
Who call themselves Only Ones and have no mothers
They live today as if we had not suffered
In a world eager to be blinded by words
Where friendly absolution dances to their summons
They leave few traces they even wear our faces
But you will not find their seed in N's remains
The piety of cowards put him in their place
Giving him as ransom to obtain forgiveness
Sometimes the borders of the kingdoms blend
Sometimes the great dreams twist and bend
2/28-3/3, 6/5-6/6 96, 5/14/98
Copyright 1996, 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
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