Poet's Choice

reminds me of an audacious unicorn

which feeds on the wool of tapestries, it is

beautiful, weak, and imprudent. I don't know

what the mechanism of illusion is based on,

but even I, a sober reader,

am enraptured by that fairy-tale defenseless land

on which feed black eagles, hungry

emperors, the Third Reich, and the Third Rome.

These two poets succeed in helping us think about the intersections and divergences of politics and poetry, one time or place and another: Gallagher, ardent about a chill sensation, also recognizes that she does not write under Ceausescu; Zagajewski, coolly ironic about a rapturous account of Poland as a fairy-tale, a defenseless creature, also recognizes the truth in the fable: His country is no unicorn, but neither is it a "Third Rome."

(Tess Gallagher's "Weather Report" is from her book "Dear Ghosts,." Graywolf. Copyright © 2006 by Tess Gallagher. Adam Zagajewski's "Poems on Poland" is from his book "Without End: New and Selected Poems." Farrar Straus Giroux. © 2002 by Adam Zagajewski.)