Adam Zagajewski - The Early Hours

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 vacation, 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 in sharp grass;

 

or the moment before sleep, when no dreams have appeared,
but they whisper their...