Don Paterson 

Translator

O how the wind brushed through the gardens
so their leaf-dresses whispered when the quinces
covered with down bodied forth so ripe and full
while in the lindens nearby a silvered wind
swelled then fell into the aisles of cherries
whose leaves were already hanging limp or shivering
with the gusts, until witheringly they seemed again
what was – a rustling in the branches and a yielding
in the grass, as if it were us, as if this flowing and
resting were sinking within us and silver still and
inclined towards everything.

They say it was harsh, and so it remained, so lonely
that night in the room where, wholly forgotten,
a bunch of tulips were the sole revellers left -
unravelling themselves, ravelling on their stalks
as if seeking a handhold, so close to falling blossom
by blossom, yet still opening up, so wholly contrary to
the low ebb we had reached, such that we sensed
how casually and pointlessly entrusted to us had been
that old fable of wealth and humility we were to read
in the falling of petals, or how through its incomparable
gift we give ourselves up to the ecstasy: the plenitude of nothing.

There was – then the moon was only a sheen, the town,
the gathered clouds, nearby the naked branches of a bough,
bowing low … what was once was festive now bankrupt,
though a glaze still lay on the asphalt like silent leaf-fall, such that
something like a cold farewell soon arose - though too soon,
like the star-dawn, a slow timbre … a bus turned and raised
the dust and droned faraway as if from a place out of time
when once everything spoke, everything inclined to one,
as lonely as it was. And also where what was called life, and
whatever it accomplished, had gone astray - but even if, far from
anything like comfort, had met, at least, a kind of match.

Did it rain
weren’t those
raindrops
letters

hailing me
as they went
moving
sinking

everything
pretty late
harking
rocking

O the night
tenebrous
billow -
so loved

every crisis
that it lost
every sense
it commanded

Take the maples
how they let slip
that they rustle

when the bluster
lifts and lifts
all their leaves

letting slip
their little silver
through the decades

through the shadows
down the paths
into the grass

It was
it will
and is
and says

says you
and laughs
and goes
and asks

if I …
it’s lost
and now
a touch

and still
the hand
says when
and knows

that we
are close
and kin,
and froze

and laughs
and speaks
and shows
the light

Through the night
we will, however
- eternal gesture -
lightly hoard
such stars we divine

For all those hours
were days of light
and we so lay
and blessed each other
with other names

naming the evening
naming us quietly
will fade and fail
softly and stay
the slightest touch

Late perhaps one evening one
one evening late perhaps

A glass filled up with anis and
a voice that weeps

A glass, of a late evening,
perhaps

I’m going nowhere, nowhere
very far

Too much, much too too far,
no more