Describing Paintings

We usually catch only a few details —

grapes from the seventeenth century,

still fresh and gleaming,

perhaps a fine ivory fork,

or a cross's wood and drops of blood,

and great suffering that has already dried.

The shiny parquet creaks.

We're in a strange town —

almost always in a strange town.

Somewhere a guard stands and yawns.

An ash branch sways outside the window.

It's absorbing,

describing static paintings.

Scholars devote tomes to it.

But we're alive,

full of memory and thought,

love, sometimes regret,

and at moments we take a special pride

because the future cries in us

and its tumult makes us human.

Adam Zagajewski

(born in Lvov in 1945. His previous books include Tremor, Mysticism for Beginners, Without End, Solidarity, Solitude, Two Cities, Another Beauty and A Defense of Ardor — all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in Paris and Houston.)