Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 11/4/2019

It's evening, Lord! The forest birds
towards their nests lean their wings...
Minstrels of your fields
have stopped to sing their songs.

I've spent a whole long hard day at work
in tears, longing for home...
and you didn't have a single bright ray
from the lights of the morning and of the day, and of the sun.
My time slowly bends to an end,
the evening star, trembling in the sky,
already flashes among the shadows of the night.

Maria Konopnicka (1842-1910)

____
I am not happy with the last line. Original: "already flashes/twinkles/shines among the shadows.

Leave me like past eventide
and reoccur like morningtide
so that I can rest in the faith
of seeing you one more time.

i feel the lonely bitterness of streetlights
slink away into the city

when I think of you,
home .

People go on, but

the birds fly up, so yellow –


turns the evening.

i hope that every evening, your
hands cradle a tired
face, that your legs find themselves warm and
tangled,

that you have the freedom to
kiss those hands,
palms, knuckles,

trace scars and forgive straying from the path,
rub shoulders and hold til it's all right.

to know
that it's okay to feel this way,
it isn't a sin to breathe this way,
it's okay to Be
in this way.



i pray that you can love yourself at night.

My finest dusk was the watermelon kind,
When bats skitted in the shortcomings of light,
And on a picnic bench in the cool June of outside,
I felt the dogwoods and pines and other apple-greens
Fidget with insects in the newness of night,
I felt the only grace was
The watermelon kind, and though the world was newly
Dying in its freshness, the pulp squirmed
From my bloated, gleaming lips like
Blubber split from a whale’s side.

tanned thighs
perfect music and perfect laughs
your house sits on the hill where the bay lies
grassy and stretching down to where the water runs like a marathon medalist or a
tidal pool circling around to reach its tail
you tail me too, when we chase each other on these fine white sands
tail me, I dare you,
get me, adore me
like you do at 3 in the morning when you have me on the counter to sing to and look at me
fanned nights, palms in the sticky air of a summer evening
spread like cards on the low table
heat simmering like breakfast at 4, which we take with us
to have on cracking shells and blacked feathers along the shore
I see your skin, soft, pulling sand—your fingers—sifting beaches, straining them easily
warmer than the sun—your eyes
august nights that bring the fight into you
you’re talking nonsense, but it makes perfect sense because it’s you
rosy cloud matter hangs above ‘till I’m under glass surfacetops, at the bottom of the sea
but I wake up just above it
to be a floater—streaming boater girl, always
really, just watching you, down with another, passion firing your eyes, unlocked
I watch as I do butterflies
wild and free to fly
it’s okay, I told you
you’re suntanned and you’re mad
you’re talking, like you do
but it’s okay
because you’re free

The storm drops they are
clawing, clawing
at the walls
I feel the shadows lengthening
exhale of evening

If you were a hungry dog
abandoned at my doorstep
would I still?

“let
me
in.”