Adam Zagajewski

Adam Zagajewski (born 21 June 1945 in Lwów (now Lviv), Ukraine) is a Polish poet, novelist, translator and essayist. His poem "Try To Praise The Mutilated World", printed in The New Yorker, became famous after the September 11 attacks.

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• You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
  you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
  You should praise the mutilated world.
  Remember the moments when we were together
  in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
  Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
  You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
  and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
  Praise the mutilated world
  and the gray feather a thrush lost,
  and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
  and returns.
  • Try to Praise the Mutilated World, Adam Zagajewski (September 24, 2001). Try to Praise the Mutilated World. The New Yorker. Retrieved on September 11, 2011.

• Our life is ordinary,
  I read in a crumpled paper
  abandoned on a bench.
  Our life is ordinary,
  the philosophers told me.
  • Ordinary Life, Adam Zagajewski (November 26, 2007). Ordinary Life. The New Yorker. Retrieved on September 11, 2011.

• December, herald of destruction,
  takes you on a long stroll
  through the black torsos of trees
  and leaves scorched in autumn’s fire,

  as if to say: so much then for
  your secrets and your treasures,
  the fervent trill of small birds,
  the promises of summer months.

  • December

• Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve
  Let the radiant thought last in stillness
  though the page is almost filled and the flame flickers
  We haven't risen yet to the level of ourselves.
  • Don't Allow The Lucid Moment To Dissolve

• Probably I am an ordinary middle-class
  believer in individual rights, the word
  "freedom" is simple to me, it doesn't mean
  the freedom of any class in particular.
  • Fire