MothsMoths watched us through
the window. Seated at the table,
we were skewered by their lambent gazes,
harder than their shattering wings.
You'll always be outside,
past the pane. And we'll be here within,
more and more in. Moths watched us
through the window, in August.
Adam Zagajewski
From A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz, which I picked up today at the Arlington County Library Sale, purportedly to give away, but I bet that won't happen. On the page facing this one, there is a poem written by an American, which Milosz argues shows the American response to nature: that it can get us back to paradise. This Polish poem, on the other hand, shows nature as insurmountably separate from us.
What is interesting in this poem, however, is that while nature is perpetually separate from man, the poet also attributes human characteristics to animals, almost a desire on the part of moths to be with man. In a sense, then, he emphasizes the difference between moths and man; in another sense, he undercuts that difference (or at least attributes to moths characteristics of higher animals--that is, my dog watches me; the ladybug doesn't).
What is interesting in this poem, however, is that while nature is perpetually separate from man, the poet also attributes human characteristics to animals, almost a desire on the part of moths to be with man. In a sense, then, he emphasizes the difference between moths and man; in another sense, he undercuts that difference (or at least attributes to moths characteristics of higher animals--that is, my dog watches me; the ladybug doesn't).
1 comment:
I love him. he had an amazing poem in the new yorker last year:
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2007/11/26/071126po_poem_zagajewski
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