Lullaby, by Adam Zagajewski

No sleep, not tonight. The window blazes.

Over the city, fireworks soar and explode.

No sleep: too much has gone on.

Rows of books stand vigil above you.

You’ll brood on what’s happened

and what hasn’t. No sleep, not tonight.

Your inflamed eyelids will rebel,

your fiery eyes sting,

your heart swell with remembrance.

No sleep. The encyclopedias will open

and poets, dressed carefully,

bundled for winter, will stroll out one by one.

Memory will open, with a sudden hiss

like a parachute’s. Memory will open,

you won’t sleep,

rocked slowly through clouds,

an easy target in the firework’s glow.

No sleep: so much has gone on,

so much been revealed.

You know each drop of blood

could compose its own scarlet Iliad,

each dawn author

a dark diary. No sleep,

under the thick blanket of roofs, attics,

and chimneys casting out handfuls of ash.

Pale nights row noiselessly into the sky,

their oars silk stockings delicately rustling.

You’ll go out to the park, and tree limbs

will amiably thump your shoulder, making

sure, confirming your fidelity. No sleep.

You’ll race through the uninhabited park,

a shadow facing more shadows.

You’ll think of someone who’s no more

and of someone else living so fully

that her life at its edges changes

to love. Light, more light

gathers in the room. No sleep, not tonight.

From “Canvas” by Adam Zagajewski. Translated from the Polish by Renata Gorczynski, Benjamin Ivry and C.K. Williams (Farrar Straus and Giroux: 82 pp., $20). Copyright 1997 Reprinted by permission.