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Adam Czerniawski

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In the Order of an English Landscape

There are fields of vision where a sharper
justice is meted out
in ample buildings
and neatly disposed dreams.
Space and time resettled
in the sphere of salvaged traces
of knowledge of the internal migration
of winter swallows fluid in the open
air; a stone church
on the scarp is the concretion
that grounds the widespread fear.

People whose world and dawn
are suddenly cut off surely have the right
to enjoy whatever has escaped
the all-consuming flames.

         It fell to them
to live nomadic lives, to flee, depart;
theirs was migration, terra incognita,
a fire by night.

      So let a moment
in the order of an English landscape
stand in homage to those ignorant
of peace, those cut to shreds, thrown
to the wall, whose ashes fall by night
on verandahs, lawns, flowerbeds.

[Boughton Monchelsea – on the 5th anniversary of his death]

Translated by Iain Higgins

Page(s) 92-93

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