Anna Swir
The First Madrigal
That night of love was pure
as an antique musical instrument
and the air around it.
Rich
as a ceremony of coronation.
It was fleshy as a belly of a woman in labor
and spiritual
as a number.
It was only a moment of life
and it wanted to be a conclusion drawn from life.
By dying
it wanted to comprehend the principle of the world.
That night of love
had ambitions.
Polish; trans. Czeslaw Milosz
& Leonard Nathan
Anna Swir, Polish, trans. Czeslaw Milosz & Leonard
Nathan, Talking to My Body, Copper Canyon Press, 1996.