WITHOUT END

The best work of one of Poland's greatest younger poets I love to swim in the sea, which keeps talking to itself in the monotone of a vagabond who no longer recalls exactly how long he's been on the road. Swimming is like prayer: palms join and part, join and part almost without end. --from "On Swimming" This selection draws from Adam Zagajewski's English-language collections,both in and out of print; it also includes work from his early books,Communiqué and Butcher Shop, as well as new poems that are amongZagajewski's most refreshing and rewarding: meditations on human frailtyand vigor, they are vividly imagined, of great clarity of thought andscrupulous attention to the natural world. In Clare Cavanagh's lucid,graceful translations these poems share the vocation that allows us, inZagajewski's words, "to experience astonishment and to stop still in thatastonishment for a long moment or two."