
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"
"[Zagajewski's poems] transport us into a realm that is majestic, boundless and unknown." --Edward Hirsch, The Washington Post Book World
"Poems [that] celebrate those rare moments when we catch a glimpse of a world from which all labels have been unpeeled." --Charles Simic, The New York Review of Books