INTO MY OWN

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom. 
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand. 
I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear. 
They would not find me changed from him they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true. 

Jedwabny namiot

 
 Ona jest jak jedwabny namiot na równinie,
W letnie południe, kiedy wiatr ciepłym przelotem
Osuszył rosę, kiedy naprężenie linek
Słabnie i podmuch lekko kołysze namiotem,
A wysmukły maszt z cedru, jego pion najdłuższy
(Centralny filar, lecz i szpic mierzący w niebo:
Jest w tym jakaś symbolika pewności duszy)
Stoi tak, jakby mógł nie zawdzięczać niczego
Tym czy innym wiązaniom — raczej luźne więzi
Łączą go tysięcznymi jedwabnymi nićmi
Miłości i uwagi ze wszystkim, co więzi
Obwód Ziemi — i tylko mu powiew kapryśny,
Który w letnim powietrzu tkaninę napina,
O tym, że więzi są więzami, przypomina.
Przełożył
Stanisław Barańczak

Ku ziemi

 
 Miłość tykała ust młodych
Tak czule, że aż niebezpiecznie;
Zbyt gęsta była jej słodycz:
Żyłem powietrzem,

Płynącym od skrytych wonności,
Powiewem — niech mi się przypomni
Ta woń ze wzgórz — winorośli
W zmierzch nieprzytomny?

W zawrocie, w bólu głowy
W zapach bzów nurzałem się nocą,
Skrapiany ich miodem liliowym,
Strząśniętą rosą.

Łaknąłem słodyczy, lecz smak ten
Tylko wtedy ostro odurzał:
W młodości — już samym płatkiem
Kłuła mnie róża.

Dziś — smak radości jest inny:
Musi w nim być szczypta soli,
Bólu, znużenia i winy;
Dojrzałość woli

Zaschły ślad łez, tę gorycz
Po tak wielkiej, że ciężkiej miłości;
Smakuje jej cierpkość kory
I dymny goździk.

Gdy, sztywny i obolały,
Cofam zdrętwiałe ramię,
Na którym się opierałem,
Półleżąc w trawie,

Ten ból to za mało jeszcze,
Ten ciężar to wciąż nie dość wiele:
Chcę szorstką ziemi powierzchnię
Czuć w całym ciele.
Przełożył
Stanisław Barańczak

MENDING WALL

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say '.Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

MOWING

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound-
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labour knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.