Thursday Short Poem — Zagajewski’s Self-Portrait

I had fully expected to put up a poem with an Easter theme this week.  I read through several candidates, but none had appeal.  But I’ve been thinking a lot about my Dad, whose 70th birthday party will be on Saturday.  My Austrian-born, English-raised father is today one of my dearest friends and heroes.  I love him very much, and cannot imagine teaching the course I do on men and masculinity without his loving influence.  (Just as my mother inspired me on my pro-feminist journey.) 

I think of my Dad when I think of this poem because he is  a gentle, cello-playing philosopher with a fondness for coins and art museums — all themes that Adam Zagajewski (can you tell I love Polish poets?) touches upon in this gorgeous Self Portrait.

Between the computer, a pencil, and a typewriter
half my day passes. One day it will be half a century.
I live in strange cities and sometimes talk
with strangers about matters strange to me.
I listen to music a lot: Bach, Mahler, Chopin, Shostakovich.
I see three elements in music: weakness, power, and pain.
The fourth has no name.
I read poets, living and dead, who teach me
tenacity, faith, and pride. I try to understand
the great philosophers–but usually catch just
scraps of their precious thoughts.
I like to take long walks on Paris streets
and watch my fellow creatures, quickened by envy,
anger, desire; to trace a silver coin
passing from hand to hand as it slowly
loses its round shape (the emperor’s profile is erased).
Beside me trees expressing nothing
but a green, indifferent perfection.
Black birds pace the fields,
waiting patiently like Spanish widows.
I’m no longer young, but someone else is always older.
I like deep sleep, when I cease to exist,
and fast bike rides on country roads when poplars

and houses
dissolve like cumuli on sunny days.
Sometimes in museums the paintings speak to me
and irony suddenly vanishes.
I love gazing at my wife’s face.
Every Sunday I call my father.
Every other week I meet with friends,
thus proving my fidelity.
My country freed itself from one evil. I wish
another liberation would follow.
Could I help in this? I don’t know.
I’m truly not a child of the ocean,
as Antonio Machado wrote about himself,
but a child of air, mint and cello
and not all the ways of the high world
cross paths with the life that–so far–
belongs to me.