Dusk is an old man with a gray cape,
Who walks with a limp and a cane.
Turning on street lights and lights in the windows
Sending the children home from their play.

When they're all safe, he smiles to himself
And hums a soft, little song
That sounds a little like little bugs buzzing
As he hobbles along.

He pauses a while in the trees near the pond,
Waves his cane and stirs up the frogs;
Then he moves on through the outskirts of town,
Along silent gardens and past barking dogs.  

He fixes his gaze upon distant hills,
That fade in a warm, violet mist;
He shakes out his cape--the pine trees turn black,
Dew starts at a flick of his wrist.

He stops by the park to smoke a cigar
That glows as it gets almost dark;
When it goes out, he leaps to the sky
And disappears like a spark.

All the passions of my long life
Are dust in the road behind me,
And all of that precious dust
Was nothing more than foolishness.
The trees around me
Have no names,
And the wind I feel
Blows from no direction.
The river I see is just a river
That stirs no memory,
And I know not where it goes
Nor whence it comes,
And I know not that I know not.
The rapids roar,
But they say nothing,
And I hear nothing,
But the sound they make.
I know the ones I love and loved,
And love comes flowing back to me,
And love is all that matters here,
By this river, under this tree.

Truth be told
The old songs sound
Very, very old

Songs in moss
Are what come across
When I hear them play

Distant voices
Might bring to mind
Young love or a rainy day

But they seem covered with dust
Like silent nicknacks
On an old shelf

Or faded like pictures
Forever displayed
In halls inside of myself

All are architects of Fate,
  Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
  Some with ornaments of rhyme.
Nothing useless is, or low;
  Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
  Strengthens and supports the rest.
For the structure that we raise,
  Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
  Are the blocks with which we build.
Truly shape and fashion these;
  Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees,
  Such things will remain unseen.
In the elder days of Art,
  Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
  For the Gods see everywhere.
Let us do out work as well,
  Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell,
  Beautiful, entire, and clean.
Else our lives are incomplete,
  Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
  Stumble as they seek to climb.
Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
  With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
  Shall to-morrow find its place.
Thus alone can we attain
  To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
  And one boundless reach of sky.

Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 11/2/2019

Paint me such a village in the valley,
sad with dark green firs and cheerful with crops...
Let she all in red rowanberries be,
and let gray linen lay on her meadows;
let colorful rainbows throw themselves across the silent pond,
dispersed by air that spurts out of the waters deep.
Let the cloud of pigeons flutter overhead,
and dandelions' soft fluff and spiders' silk threads...

And paint pastures and fertile fields,
and in their black soil let wheat and barley shine with gold,
and let fiery red of poppies ridges beautifully adorn,
and poplars over the road make into a string,
and throw the silvery mist on the meadows...

And let they walk so, loudly, through the field
heifers' bells and clapping of whips.
Let the willows ponder by the murmuring stream,
casting shadow pre-sunset and long,
and quiet calming blue give around,
and fill the air with birds' happy babbling.
And put such a cloud on the mountains' brow...
And only people make ours, so dear to my heart.

Maria Konopnicka (1842-1910)

* The original name of the poem is "In a foreign land", as
the poem was written in Karlsbad in Germany.

Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 11/2/2019

Forget-me-nots are
true fairy-tale flowers!
They grow by the brooks,
and with curious eye they look.
 
When you take a walk
they softly laugh
and they whisper modestly,
"don't forget about me."

Maria Konopnicka (1842-1910)

________
I am not sure if "when you take a walk" is correct, maybe it should be "when you're taking a walk". Or even maybe both versions are wrong ;) Sometimes it is harder to translate something that short than much longer poems :(