Every year she awaits

the arrival of the Perseids,

those familiar friends stream

like curtains, just behind,

the silhouette of hands,

“Hello,” and “Goodbye,”

in the same instant

and meaning the same.

.

Every year they fall

in familiar voices.

They sing swift

in silver and blue.

She cannot tell

if the song is sad

or joyous, and that is okay.

.

Their presence breaks through

cloud banks and hot tears

where the sky and the water

are the same color.

There is no difference there,

either, or anywhere.

​

The Perseids, Birdie Rose

This morning I watched fog

Unroll down the hill.

It had gathered itself into

a grand hilltop bank

and thinned,

becoming amorphous, as it spilled

down the slope,

vanishing at the valley’s floor.

And I wondered about evanescence:

Do our lives extravagantly unfurl

and become so widely flung

that every living thing

joyfully, promiscuously

respirates Spirit –

Yours, mine,

vanishing and

the vanished

mingling formless,

invisible but present,

boundless—

with each misty breath?

​

Fog, Doug Warn

You must take up the world’s whole weight
and make it easier to bear.
Toss it like a knapsack
on your shoulders and set out.
The best time is evening, in spring, when
trees breathe calmly and the night promises
to be fine, elm twigs crackle in the garden.
The whole weight? Blood and ugliness? Can’t be done.
A trace of bitterness will linger on your lips,
and the contagious despair of the old woman
you spotted in the tram.
Why lie? After all rapture
exists only in imagination and leaves quickly.
Improvisation – always just improvisation,
great or small, that’s all we know,
in music, as a jazz trumpet weeps happily
or when you stare at the blank page
or try to outwit
sorrow by opening a favorite book of poems;
just then the phone usually rings,
someone asking, would you like to try
the latest model? No thank you.
I prefer the proven brands.
Grayness and monotony remain; grief
the finest elegy can’t heal.
But perhaps there are things hidden from us,
in which sorrow and enthusiasm mix
non-stop, on a daily basis, like the dawn’s birth
above the seashore, no, wait,
like the laughter of those little altar boys
in white vestments, on the corner of St. John and Mark,
remember?”
Improvisation, Adam Zagajewski
translated by Clare Cavanagh