LAVA
And what if Heraclitus and Parmenides
are both correct
and side by side, two worlds exist,
one calm, the other frantic; one arrow
rushes heedlessly; another watches it
with indulgence, the same wave moves and stands still.
Animals are born and die at once,
birch leaves play in the wind, and at that very moment
disintegrate in the rusty cruel flame .
Lava kills and preserves, the heart beats
and is beaten; there was a war and there wasn't,
Jews died,Jews live, cities burned down,
cities stand, love fades, the perpetual kiss,
the wings of hawks have to be brown,
you are still with me though we are no more,
ships sink, sand sings, douds wander
like wedding veils in decay.
All is lost. So much dazzlement. The hills
descend tenderly, bearing long banners of trees.
Moss inches up a stone churchtower
and its small mouth shyly praises the orth.
At dusk,jasmine glows like savage lamps
possessed by their own luminescence.
In a museum, before a somber canvas,
someone's catlike eyes narrow. All is over.
Riders gallop upon black horses, a tyrant composes
a death sentence full of grammatical errors.
Youth turns to nothing in
one day, the faces of girls freeze
into medallions, despair becomes rapture,
and the hard fruits of stars are growing in the sky
like grapes, and beauty endures, shaken, still,
and God is and dies; night returns to us
every evening, and dawn is gray-haired from dew.
Translated from the Polish by Renata Gorczynski and Benjamin lvry
