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Adam Czerniawski

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Interior Topography (for H.K.)

We settled in a mountainous and wooded land:
there are a few lakes here and brooks; wadded
clouds surge and billow across an azure sky,
and in the evening, before the new moon rises,
                         the flowing sound of a pipe or flute.

Once a week there are letters and newspapers,
sometimes even a glossy fashion magazine. On the slope
stands King Ludwig’s castle; in his cabinets
are enamels and services, brooches and tapestries
                         from banquets, battles and hunts.
 
There is also an old inn and a church. The ruined
cloister is haunted; the place was once swept by war -
they say that Luther was sheltered here. In July
the tourists come. Ice-cream is sold till September,
                         and then in winter there is peace.

But the dappled mist of a morning lake
of polyphonic leaves of the fluttering wings
of a sharp ray of birds of a breakneck sun
parts the coat torn on the raft steered by the local
                         keeper of imaginary bees.

 

Translated by Iain Higgins

Page(s) 85

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