Me.
It's me. I'm weeping
flapping my own wings.
I am the bird in the morning
and the late night-bird.
My eyes are bloodshot, yet I've got to look
right into the sun.
At my feet
they are digging a lonely grave.
A crow - that's black -
sits on an outstretched cross
and it croaks
and it croaks and pecks
dead bits of dust with its restless beak.

They stagger on:
August shimmers round them with its mists;
uneasily, like shadows,
they stagger forward toward the big grave.
And behind them, the mulleins,
a procession that starts at the dunes,
and the yarrows set out from the balks
and the wild lilac sets out from beyond the fences:
sweet flag rustles in a few holes;
its roots smells sweet as it shakes off slime,
but it follows too.
And the moor contributes bulrush and thistles,
yellow spears of the thistle
lining long roads,
and the wide-leaved burdock,
the coltsfoot that's sleepy,
the violet henbane,
the thorny haw,
- they all rise
walking.

The soft leaves of the willow move
one massive formation:
they are joining the other mourners
and this is the path of mourning.

Whole fields, tricky with stubble,
have already taken off:
they have left their most native marches,
huge walls, floating in arches,
floating out over across
this great moment of loss.
And you, the Immortal,
yes, you - God,
defended by innumerable lights,
inaccessibly enthroned,
you sit tight among stiff stars,
you rest your head upon the gold Triangle;
two trees, transformed to a cross, act for a foot-stool.
Carefully, through an hourglass, yo8u pour the debris of stars.
You never even glance at the fields where we are.

Have mercy, have mercy upon us.

The Sunset

Blessed be this moment 
When the evening hymn of the soul seeks music, 
the spotless, humble and meek soul -
He was and we were before the beginning. 
Let us praise and worship his holy name.

Light of sunset, why don't you fade 
into the ocean of these thick vapours 
which have buried my sun? 
The moon hoists itself up over the coiling mountains,
touches the edges of clouds with silver 
and illuminates the crevices of snow.
Night steals quietly down from the east:
its great calm rests on the slopes -
And yet you glow.
An echo crawls towards the soul
from those far distant plains
that fall asleep beyond a hundred waters
across a thousand roads.
Silence.
This is the croon of the boy's old tune
Oh, my fife, play for me, play.
I've made you out of the twig of a willow,
there where the blue stream silvers a hollow,
and there where the wood sprites follow -
oh !
At dawn I ploughed my plot
from field to field, the lot,
but cockle grew to blot
all my corn out.
Oh, my fife, play for me, play,
play for me ....
And why do you still glow?
Once and for all, let it be put out.
The mountain ash blushes, 
the old linden gushes, 
dust from the road rises in bushes -
Oh, light of sunset, why can't you keep quiet? 
Why - with this fiery cry 
shooting from that precipice 
between these two hell walls -
do you blind me so and deafen 
that I cannot reach my end ? 
My day has already died 
but its sunset light still bleeds 
as if it were to bleed into eternity. 
It eats all things with its flames, 
burning my, world and burning my soul. 
From the gigantic sheaves of fire 
thrashed by invisible flails 
the seeds of sparks fall round 
into the sky, on to the earth. 
The moon has caught fire: 
in a moment it has grown 
into a huge flaming sphere; 
it breaks into pieces 
and tumbles in fiery lumps 
on to the scorched bodies of mountains, 
on to the ashes of the burnt spruce. 
The lakes are in flames, 
the hundred waters burn 
and the thousand roads! 
From the crazy entrails of the earth 
volcanoes explode, 
and the stars lash with lightning 
the foaming floods of flames -
and with a crash 
in the red ravage, perish. 
God, 
why do you punish me? 
You stand in the glowing space, 
yourself aflame, bigger than the space, 
an enormous fiery cross in your hand, 
and you hurl the world at me as it burns.

The Ballad of the Sunflower

My friends were flowers, but only one
- An old blind sunflower -
Stood straight among my garden weeds
In flowering isolation.
Night after night, I heard the wind
Whip him with all its power.
I didn't help him much, unless
My grief was consolation.
What matters is dancing.

One evening I got very drunk
- Wine's a good cure, you know.
I punched a window out and gazed
At mountains far away.
There, they said, the snows are lying
And stars that glitter like snow.
Damp darkness fell on my eyelids
And all I saw looked grey.
What matters is dancing.

Dried meadows could be seen, they said,
And tufts of withered sedge.
Alders and leafless ash, they said,
In bogs or by the road.
Human despairs, they said, stepped out
Of mists at the mountains' edge
Hurrying on to the funeral
Of the merry of God.
What matters is dancing.

It seems that I had brothers too
- Death told it all to me?
How they had gone to some cruel war
?Her kisses fleshed the tale.
And let this dark roar deeply on,
These tears swell like the sea,
This earth they fatten with their blood
Pant in an autumn gale.
What matters is dancing.

And then the sunflower, blind and old,
Squeezed through the broken glass
Till he was in my small gay room
Among the smells of wine.
His golden crown had long since gone.
He'd reached a pretty pass.
His bald black head upon my breast
Expressed his sad design.
What matters is dancing.

He fawned upon me like a dog
Nuzzling against my face.
A single clumsy drop of dew
Fell on my flushed skin,
Fell from the socket where his eye
Had left no other trace.
The old blind sunflower kept the silence
He shouted sorrow in.
What matters is dancing.

Don't mock yourself, my friend, and me
It's what we always get.
We're born to bless the death we die.
My friend, can you still hear ?
The knight finds death on a high tight noose,
Let the sturgeon choke in a net,
God himself can fall from his throne,
Wrench and revolve the spear.
What matters is dancing.

My sorrow gives you no relief.
It is a gay old sot.
Since you who once could face the sky
Are wretched in decline
I've got a better cure than that,
The cure that makes bones rot.
As for the soul, death's messengers,
We'll drink it, drunken swine.
What matters is dancing.

I tore away his last leaf then
And picked the last seeds out
A firm grip on his hard wood stalk
Freed him from the ground.
Dark earth gushed in beneath the sill
From where roots used to sprout.
The old blind sunflower must have wept
But I heard not a sound.
What matters is dancing.

I rose next morning - a murderer?
Redeemer? who can say?
I woke again in my small gay room
Among the smells of wine.
The old blind sunflower, his gold crown gone,
No longer now bore sway
The wind no longer made him bend
His sorrow down to mine.
What matters is dancing.

The Day Before Harvest

One day at harvest time the sun
Was burning up the sky;
Great Mr. Godlord took a walk
Through oats that grew hip high.

He walked bareheaded and unbuttoned
Examining every ear,
Wondering just what kind of crop
He could expect this year.

And had the ploughing been quite right
Had the sowing been well done?
Was he, great Mr. Godlord worth
The praise he always won?

Then in his wide left palm he crushed
An ear or two at most,
Studied them closely, gently blew
So that no grain was lost.

Davidson came to that same field.
"I'll not have these oats spoiled.
This harvest is my blood and sweat.
My wife scrimped while I toiled."

"Yours is it ? That's a fine one. Mine!"
Old Mr. Godlord spat.
"I ploughed the land, I sowed the seed.
Poor man, you must know that.

But if you still insist, my man,
I'll tell you what we'll do.
We'll wrestle to find out if it
Belongs to me or you."

They grasped each other then and fought.
Davidson's skin was torn.
God used his strength. Davidson fell
Stone dead among the corn.

Such is the usual lot of man.
Such things are often seen,
Men falling as fat cattle fall
When clover's thick and green.

Old Mr. Godlord wins and smiles. .
"Brother, you must have known
These crops were mine and always will
Be mine and mine alone."

Then in his wide left palm he crushes
An ear or two at most,
Studies them closely, gently blows
So that no grain is lost.

Translated by Jerzy Peterkiewicz and Burns Singer