Circus by Adam Zagajewski

1.
I suppose we have days of questions with no answers.

2.
Last night I came across a photo of lyrics on a brick wall: I am alive, I am alive, and that is the best that I can do. Coincidentally, that is the only Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s song I know.

3.
I suppose we have days of questions with no answers.

Circus
Adam Zagajewski
Translated by Clare Cavanagh

Look, your longing swung from the trapeze.
The clown is you as well and the tame tiger
who begs for mercy calls someone to mind.
Even the tin-pot music
has its charm; it seems
you’re starting to make peace
with your times (everyone else has,
why not me?—you say).
So why then does the circus tent
rise above an ancient graveyard?

—

This is from Without End: New and Selected Poems by Adam Zagajewski, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

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