Szczęście nadrabia krótkość trwania wysokością wzlotu

 
 Och, świecie burz i gwałtów:
Dni, kiedy twoich kształtów
W swój całun szarobury
Nie otulały chmury
I mgły, kiedy w ogóle
Olśniewającą kulę
Słońca dostrzec się dało —
Tych dni było tak mało,
Że nie wiem, skąd właściwie
Wziął mi się i czym żywię
Mój zmysł ciepła i światła.
Odpowiedź nie jest łatwa,
Lecz wiązać to się mogło
Z kryształową pogodą
Pewnego dnia — jednego —
Gdy wstało czyste niebo
I tę czystość poranną
Doniosło nie zbrukaną
W zmrok. Niby jasnym piętnem,
Naznaczył mnie swym pięknem
Dzień bez skazy i ujmy,
Przez nas tylko podwójnym
Raz przekreślony cieniem,
Gdy przez kwiatów płomienie
Przeszliśmy z izby wnętrza
W las, gdzie samotność głębsza.
Przełożył
Stanisław Barańczak

Śpiew ptaków nigdy już nie miał być taki

 
 Pewien był — przysiąc mógł — że w ptaków śpiewy
Rozbrzmiewające wokoło w ogrodzie
Wkradło się w końcu echo głosu Ewy:
Jeśli nie słowa, to choć sens tej co dzień,
Przez cały dzień wyśpiewywanej pieśni.
Prawda, że ciche nucenie kobiece
Mogło na ptaki wpłynąć tylko jeśli
Śmiech lub tęsknota niosły pieśń w powietrze.
Lecz, tak czy owak, była w ich piosence.
Jej głos w śpiew ptasi wplótł się dźwięcznym pasmem,
Jakby od dawna brzmiał w tym lesie; więcej:
Jakby miał zostać wśród tych drzew na zawsze.
Śpiew ptaków nigdy już nie miał być taki
Sam. Po to przyszła na świat, między ptaki.
Przełożył
Stanisław Barańczak

Telefon

 
 — Kiedy dziś sobie stąd poszedłem, wprost
Przed siebie, jak najdalej,
I kiedy w pewnej chwili
Leżałem w trawie — jakiś kwiat samotnie
Do ucha mi się nachylił
I dobiegł mnie twój głos.
Nie mów mi, że tak nie było, że wcale
Nic nie mówiłaś — w ten kwiat, tu na oknie,
Musiałaś szepnąć coś. Pamiętasz treść tych słów?

— Wpierw ty powiedz, co ci się zdawało, że słyszysz.

— Odszukałem kwiat w trawie, przegnałem ospale
Brzęczącą nad nim pszczołę i przytknąłem znów
Ucho do płatków; i nie tylko głos,
Lecz jakby słowo jakieś usłyszałem w ciszy —
Co to było za słowo? Moje imię? Potem
Powiedziałaś — jeżeli nie ty sama, ktoś
Powiedział "Wróć już"; tyle do mnie doszło.

— Mogłam coś w tym rodzaju pomyśleć — nie głośno.

— W każdym razie — jestem z powrotem.

 Przełożył
Stanisław Barańczak

THE ARMFUL

For every parcel I stoop down to seize
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,
Extremes too hard to comprehend at. once
Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
With all I have to hold with hand and mind
And heart, if need be, I will do my best.
To keep their building balanced at my breast.
I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
Then sit down in the middle of them all.
I had to drop the armful in the road
And try to stack them in a better load.

THE AXE-HELVE

I've known ere now an interfering branch
Of alder catch my lifted axe behind me.
But that was in the woods, to hold my hand
>From striking at another alder's roots,
And that was, as I say, an alder branch.
This was a man, Baptiste, who stole one day
Behind me on the snow in my own yard
Where I was working at the chopping block,
And cutting nothing not cut down already.
He caught my axe expertly on the rise,
When all my strength put forth was in his fayour,
Held it a moment where it was, to calm me,
Then took it from me -- and I let him take it.
I didn't know him well enough to know
What it was all about. There might be something
He had in mind to say to a bad neighbour
He might prefer to say to him disarmed.
But all he had to tell me in French-English
Was what he thought of- not me, but my axe;
Me only as I took my axe to heart.
It was the bad axe-helve some one had sold me --
'Made on machine,' he said, ploughing the grain
With a thick thumbnail to show how it ran
Across the handle's long .drawn serpentine,
Like the two strokes across a dollar sign.
'You give her 'one good crack, she's snap raght off.
Den where's your hax-ead flying t'rough de hair?'
Adrnltted; and yet, what was that to him?
'Come on my house and I put you one in
What's las' awhile -- good hick'ry what's grow crooked,
De second growt' I cut myself--tough, tough!' 
Something to sell? That wasn't how it sounded. 
'Den when you say you come? It's cost you nothing.
To-naght?' 
As well to-night as any night. 
Beyond an over-warmth of kitchen stove
My welcome differed from no other welcome.
Baptiste knew best why I was where I was.
So long as he would leave enough unsaid,
I shouldn't mind his being overjoyed
(If overjoyed he was) at having got me
Where I must judge if what he knew about an axe
That not everybody else knew was to count
For nothing in the measure of a neighbour.
Hard if, though cast away for life with Yankees,
A Frenchman couldn't get his human rating. 
Mrs. Baptiste came in and rocked a chair
That had as many motions as the world:
One back and forward, in and out of shadow,
That got her nowhere; one more gradual,
Sideways, that would have run her on the stove
In time, had she not realized her danger
And caught herself up bodily, chair and all,
And set herself back where she ,started from.
'She ain't spick too much Henglish- dat's too bad.'
I was afraid, in brightening first on me,
Then on Baptiste, as if she understood
'What passed between us, she was only reigning.
Baptiste was anxious for her; but no more
Than for himself, so placed he couldn't hope
To keep his bargain of the morning with me
In time to keep me from suspecting him
Of really never having meant to keep it. 
Needlessly soon he had his axe-helves out,
A quiverful to choose from, since he wished me
To have the best he had, or had to spare --
Not for me to ask which, when what he took
Had beauties he had to point me out at length
To ensure their not being wasted on me.
He liked to have it slender as a whipstock,
Free from the least knot, equal to the strain
Of bending like a sword across the knee.
He showed me that the lines of a good helve
Were native to the grain before the knife
Expressed them, and its curves were no false curves
Put on it from without. And there its strength lay
For the hard work. He chafed its long white body
>From end to end with his rough hand shut round it.
He tried it at the eye-hold in the axe-head.
'Hahn, hahn,' he mused, 'don't need much taking down.'
Baptiste knew how to make a short job long
For love of it, and yet not waste time either. 
Do you know, what we talked about was knowledge?
Baptiste on his defence about the children
He kept from school, or did his best to keep --
Whatever school and children and our doubts
Of laid-on education had to do
With the curves of his axe-helves and his having
Used these unscrupulously to bring me
To see for once the inside of his house.
Was I desired in friendship, partly as some one
To leave it to, whether the right to hold
Such doubts of education should depend
Upon the education of those who held them.
But now he brushed the shavings from his knee
And stood the axe there on its horse's hoof,
Erect, but not without its waves, as when
The snake stood up for evil in the Garden'-
Top-heavy with a heaviness his short,
Thick hand made light of, steel-blue chin drawn down
And in a little -- a French touch in that.
Baptiste drew back and squinted at it, pleased;
'See how she's cock her headl'