Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 10/5/2019

Sitting on the perch the rooster boasted:
soon the king of swimmers I'll be
and laurel wreath I will get:
Cos the champion of champions I am in this respect!
The hens, excited, clucked in admiration,
small yellow chicks silently listened in awe,
oinking happily were the piglets,
and the ducks? Like crazy they laughed!

Wieslaw Musialowski 10/15/2001

Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 9/7/2019

The sun has saddened its face
with lots of gray,
and made the mountains' bed
with an abundance of colors:

For Winter - it makes the bed with whites.
For Autumn - with reds.
In the Summer - with golds.
And for Spring? - with lyrical greens.

It has adorned everything
with shades of colors
awakened but still sleepy,
spoiling with correlation
of fiery greens.

Enamored time of red
of autumn colors
will turn the forest into one big flame
with fulfillment of flirtation.

A dewdrop sobs in the morning
put to sleep by dusk,
flying away as a wreath of rainbow
it returns at dawn.

Wieslaw Musialowski 10/15/2001

Like leaves

Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 7/19/2018

If for the orphans of golden autumn,
Then only in a country where they dig out
From sycamores, beech trees* - among ancestors' shadows
Because these, constantly dying live.

If hands of the poor fall
Like golden leaves, without the law of gravity
- Then what must be never changes
And richer they die.

If everything ecloses itself in the space
Over the crowns with radial glow
Then nothing apart from this color will change...
They'll be reborn again in the multi-leaf tree.

Wieslaw Musialowski 9/22/2004

Beech tree is a national Polish tree often found in Polish poetry.


Indeed

Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 9/23/2019

Nestled into a pillow before falling asleep
maybe you will think to yourself
I managed to get something done today
and the rest? let it happen in dreams,

when you wake up fresh in the morning,
like the grass silvered with frost,
the sun will twinkle with a ray
and everything shall be great,

at midday, you'll sit under a tree,
because it's pleasant to rest in the shade,
and to end the day successfully
you look at the tops of the mountains

and you think how wonderful and beautiful
is autumn, luckily, the forest is not burning
though beech trees as red as fire

Wieslaw Musialowski 9/2/2019

*A reference to The 2019 Siberian wildfires.

Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 10/8/2019

* * * (A sad September is heading over the tops...)

A sad September is heading over the tops,
through the barren peaks suddenly turned gray.
In his heart hidden luggage of memories he carries,
and only crickets' farewell sails
quietly rustle with wind filled,
rocking to sleep dreams* unfulfilled.

Wieslaw Musialowski 10/27/2002

*moments in the original

Autumnal Hour (Shorter)

Look! - from smoke I plait this poem short:
for fogs over an autumn meadow
with heathers strewn and drowsy,
for stubbles, fields and forests - in honor - of bards!
I? - I know they're hardly rustling
the strophes of simple words... And you? - you weave sorrows!

Wieslaw Musialowski 6/19/2002

Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 10/7/2019

So poetically the mountain forest shimmers:
yellow-gold chickens here and there,
gray guineafowls' small chicks,
and hens clad in red of the dresses.

On the edge in beads of flames
a rafter of turkeys - eye-catching -
therefore colors of colorful flocks of poultry
in dying green submerged are easy to remember.

The cold ray gathers goose feathers:
and from quills arranges an autumn mattress,
while the whitest down he'll embroider into hours

with larch needle, so that a pillowcase made of the rainbow
every year would bloom many times
on the dial of a silver cobweb.

Wieslaw Musialowski 10/27/2002

Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 7/20/2018

Look! - white petals, like the first snow,
like a holiday linen tablecloths.
I? - I remember those holidays:
warm shadows of candles, you put on the table,
and the puff of breath in disarray,
entertains with the play of colors, and from feathers... sizzles.

Look! - from smoke I plait this poem short:
for fogs over an autumn meadow
with heathers strewn and drowsy,
for stubbles, fields and forests - in honor - of bards!
I? - I know they're hardly rustling
the strophes of simple words... And you? - you weave sorrows!

Wieslaw Musialowski 6/19/2002

Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 7/20/2018

And the sun seems to disappear in the west
in beeches crowns, it sinks in green
and the night like a king sits upon the throne
and it shimmers in moonlight.

And nothing has changed - ages are passing:
the moon has not grown, the sun has not diminished,
hunter and hare do not count the stumbles,
no beginning will ever meet the end.

The crows are cawing though I do not know what
- allegedly they carry foretaste of winter
and it so happens that my eyes water,
because time turns winter's birthday

into the autumn's funeral. The last travelers
will sit for a moment as before the journey
the strangers sat with the household members
like a daisy with the most beautiful rose.

And so is the Earth that there is enough space for everyone,
enough water and air, fire and ash:
for the rich, the beggars, for those experienced by fate
- without favoring - it will host everyone.

Wieslaw Musialowski 6/14/2008

each scrawling night,
i stumble to my cave.
moss walls dripping—
the ocean kissing the lip.

i scratch my voice
into the bare rock,
with the sunlight trickling
in with the tide.

i poke my head out
when the night seeps
over the horizon...
i watch the cave flood.

when the tender stems
of light reach out,
they slide beneath my door
and pull me through—

and as the tendrils
dance in their own silhouette,
they tell my story
written in flame.