The other thing that--
do you still-- am I talking into the mic?
Raise your hand if I get drifty.
So in America, the war was--
let me skip to that poem, the Central Park poem,
called "Summer Movies in Central Park."
He had a friend who was an anti-Stalinist Marxist
in Paris, who he was writing back and forth letters
to at this time, and Juliusz Kronski,
philosopher, who was saying to him,
we don't give up on the hope that Marx and Hegel are right,
that all of this is leading inevitably
to the perfect society.
And Czeslaw said right back, well--
[LAUGHTER]
"Movies in Central Park for Juliusz Kronski in Paris"
In the dim light, on the trampled grasses,
Girls lie still with their soldiers
in their arms, or sailors,
Until the image alters.
Dark glance of a shoulder, an unbuttoned blouse,
Trees sprang from the ancient bedrock,
And the spray of leaves fall like cords,
Where nature becomes a theater.
The silvery machinery of the skyline shifts,
The summit of the abstract city--
The summits of the abstract city quiver under murky
rainbows in the humid air.
Honeycomb of metal or stalactites
divide the distance into sheer domains.
I have to say--
so I was working with David, and he
would do a first translation.
And I would say, I don't know what the hell this means.
And he would say, I don't know what the hell it means either.
So once you get what's happening, there--
so everybody's sprawled.
The young are sprawled on the lawn, making out.
They're seeing a summer night movie,
and the flickering of the light on the palisade
of the high rises on Fifth Avenue are lit up.
When nature becomes a theater, the silver machinery
of the skyline shifts,
The summits of the abstract city quiver
under murky rainbows in the humid air,
Honeycombs of metal or stalactites
divide the distance into sheer domains.
I remember a field where the radiance of the burning city
colored the dry wormwood, and crickets played,
Red from the glow, from which an army of smoke marches.
The water, rushing along the road,
flutters the dress on the corpse of a woman,
As the city descends long days and nights into legend,
which won't compensate for its disasters.
This memory contains a warning for those who spend
their nights on soft couches.
An errant fire will often burn right through the rosy strains
on bedsheets.
Whoever enters the human cosmos, where marvels are performed,
Should know that it delivers, serenely, on a daily basis,
The retributions of malignant fate.
They don't hear this.
As if the fresh Earth had brought forth the first palm
after the flood,
Trembling, they enter the quiet groves of sex,
And simply give themselves to each other.
And yet, even here in the middle of Manhattan,
I could see how, as a warning sound,
their faces blanch in the glare of the screen,
And sudden fright weakens their legs.
Here, in the line of cars along Fifth Avenue,
I see how the ambassador's limousine
glides past the white masts,
On which the various flags of fictitious colors
sway in a mild breeze.
The poor envoys, their labors are great,
As they, eyes asquint, compose a holy covenant
with duplicitous ink,
Or the pact between the Athenians
and the Lacedaemonians.
And what sort of power was granted to us, Juliusz,
When we foresaw the fate of our native realm,
Which was to be brought under the militarized feet
of foreign powers.
We had barely mourned in our secret hearts
That Europe, mother of arts and sciences,
With its old wisdom and bloody cobblestones,
As we place it on the scales opposite the new face,
Old Europe, new Europe,
We know that the ingenuity of our weapons is disastrous,
That the whirlwind shreds banners,
And that the heirs to the glory of the Greek name,
Glory, our heritage from the Greeks,
will last as long as humankind lasts,
And that this age of darkness will pass,
The way winters pass when the strong sap
rises under the brittle bark.
The smiles of the sophists in papal Rome
will knock the pen from the hand of the inquisitors,
Just as, once upon a time, books were
brought from Constantinople to the northern lands--
So on.
You can see he's now kicking into some imagination
with his friend of how some new world is
going to emerge out of this.
Meanwhile, the Soviets are taking over Poland,
and he knows it.
And most of the Polish exiles in New York
are picketing in front of the Polish embassy
because Poland is going back into servitude again,
and Czeslaw finds himself serving this government, which
is no longer tenable.
And he writes a poem that gets him in such trouble,
that he gets recalled to Poland.
And where his passport is confiscated because they think
he's politically unreliable.