#bronislaw maj

[evenasmallcough]

A Leaf by Bronislaw Maj

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.

[steelwagstaff]

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.

-- Bronisław Maj, translated from the Polish by Czesław Miłosz & Robert Hass

[youandthemountains]

Seen fleetingly, from a train: a foggy evening, strands of smoke hanging immobile over fields, the humid blackness of earth, the sun almost set - against its fading shield, far away, two dots: women in dark wraps coming back from church perhaps, perhaps one tells something to another, some common story, of sinful lives perhaps - her words distinct and simple but out of them one could create everything again. Keep it in memory, forever: the sun, ploughed earth, women, love, evening, those few words good for the beginning, keep it all - perhaps tomorrow we will be somewhere else, altogether.

Seen Fleetingly, From a Train Bronislaw Maj

[iamthetulip]

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.

-Bronislaw Maj, from A Book of Luminous Things (edited by Czeslaw Milosz)

[unencumberedbylogic]

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.

Bronislaw Maj, A Leaf

[hypocrite-lecteur]

"And if there are two truths: the ant's and the lark's, the sky's and the furrowed hands, the truths of song and crawling. Standing aside-where am I. Which of them will take me. With my thirst for contradictions, for generating useless questions, with this cowardly "between," my shaky truth."

Bronislaw Maj, from "I lie with my face low" tr. Clare Cavanagh