The Early Hours
Adam Zagajewski


The early hours of morning; you still aren't writing
(rather you aren't even trying), you just read lazily.
Everything is idle, quiet, full, as if
it were a gift from the muse of sluggishness,

just as earlier, in childhood, on vacations, when a colored
map was slowly scrutinized before a trip, a map
promising so much, deep ponds in the forest
like glittering butterfly eyes, mountain meadows drowning
    sharp grass;

or the moment before sleep, when no dreams have appeared,
but they whisper their approach from all parts of the world,
their march, their pilgrimage, their vigil at the sickbed
(grown sick of wakefulness), and the quickening among medieval
    figures

compressed in endless stasis over the the cathedral;
the early hours of morning silence
                                         —you still aren't writing,
you still understand so much.
                          Joy is close.