Bronislaw Maj: "A Leaf"

A leaf, one of the last, parts from a maple branch:
it is spinning in the transparent air of October, falls
on a heap of others, stops, fades. No one
admired its entrancing struggle with the wind,
followed its flight, no one will distinguish it now
as it lies among other leaves, no one saw
what I did. I am
the only one.



"A Leaf" by Bronislaw Maj, from A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry, edited by Czeslaw Milosz (Mariner Books, 1998). Translated from the original Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass.

Art credit: Untitled photograph from www.tophdgallery.com.

Bronislaw Maj: "An August Afternoon"

An August afternoon. Even here is heard
the rush of the glittering Raba.
We look at the mountains,
my mother and I. How clear the air is:
every dark spruce on Mount Lubon
is seen distinctly as if it grew in our garden.
An astonishing phenomenon—it astonishes my mother
and me. I am four and do not know
what it means to be four  I am
happy: I do not know what to be means
or happiness  I know my mother
sees and feels what I do. And I know
that as always in the evening
we will take a walk
far, up to the woods, already before
long.

"An August Afternoon" by Bronislaw Maj, from A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry, edited by Czeslaw Milosz. Translated from the original Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass. © Mariner Books, 1998.

Art credit: "Night on Mt. Lubon," photograph by Tlapp, taken on 2009/10/08 in Luboń Wielki, Szlak pieszy żółty, Poland (originally color).