Kyrie Eleison

A Moment

I'm walking on the slope of a hill newly green.
Grass, small flowers in the grass,
just as in a children's book.
Hazy sky, already turning blue.
A view of other hills spreads out in silence.

As if there had been no Cambrians or Siluries here,
rocks growling at one another,
upthrust abysses,
no fiery nights
nor days in clouds of darkness.

As if no plains had moved through here
in feverish delirium,
in icy shivers.

As if only elsewhere had the seas been churning,
tearing apart the edges of the horizon.

It is nine-thirty local time.
Everything is in its place and in genial accord.
In the valley, the small stream as a small stream.
The path as a path from always to ever.

Woods in the guise of woods world without end amen,
and on high, birds in flight as birds in flight.

As far as the eye can see a moment reigns here.
One of those earthly moments
implored to linger.

WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA
translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak

New Ohio Review
Spring 2009

from Poetry Daily

Renga # 10

Have you given up your gut

lately, he said

with kind, piercing eyes.

Have you given up your life?

And the wind entered caves

and windows and the sky

readily reddened

for the big sleep.

Tell me what it really takes

to utter those last words,

to forgive moments.

And to forgive forever.

the curator, ramblingsoul, panch