I talked to a Frenchman

By PoemsAdam Zagajewski; Translated from the Polish by Antony Graham; From the forthcoming anthology Post-War Polish Poetry, edited by Czeslaw Milosz, University of California Press.

April 14, 1982

The meaning of the word: independent country-- need not amount to much. A clear Sunday afternoon, from the windows comes the music of conversations, the sounds of Chopin. On Friday at daybreak you hear the hard knock of a hammer, a swearword and the mocking banter of the workingmen. An independent country does not mean a great deal. No more than a fountain-head of water in a stony valley among the rocks.