The Soul
We know we’re not allowed to use your name.
We know you’re inexpressible,
anemic, frail, and suspect
for mysterious offenses as a child.
We know that you are not allowed to live now
in music or in trees at sunset.
We know—or at least we have been told—
that you do not exist at all, anywhere.
And yet we still keep hearing your weary voice
—in an echo, a complaint, in the letters we receive
from Antigone in the Greek desert.
–Adam Zagajewski
translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh
Thank you to my friend and poet, Martin Dickinson, for bringing this poem to me.