Spring by Ishion Hutchinson

These creosote tears you must’ve seen on a Kraków statue streaked with rain.

Spring by Ishion Hutchinson

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                   in memoriam, Adam Zagajewski (1945- 2021) 


Cool as the breeze, spring
comes and proves the proven 
blank which was sorrow
a turbulent need, a healing. 
Who am I kidding? To say “spring,”
and to say so on the front steps
just after noon in the bright cool of the day,
is a form of dissolution.
How have I arrived at that?
Your death is only two weeks old, sudden
and tender as the buds on the firethorn
returning and an old siren sound
carrying on the breeze
between two finches darting
through shattered powerlines,
cements a kind of comfort.
I accept this. These creosote 
tears you must’ve seen on a Kraków 
statue streaked with rain. What arrives next
is the marvelous phrase,
“half sea, half land”
(not yours but close) marvelous I mouth
before I digressed,
and then zoomed away to teach them, Adam, 
your “To Go to Lvov.”