Bronislaw Maj: "An August Afternoon"

An August afternoon. Even here is heard
the rush of the glittering Raba.
We look at the mountains,
my mother and I. How clear the air is:
every dark spruce on Mount Lubon
is seen distinctly as if it grew in our garden.
An astonishing phenomenon—it astonishes my mother
and me. I am four and do not know
what it means to be four  I am
happy: I do not know what to be means
or happiness  I know my mother
sees and feels what I do. And I know
that as always in the evening
we will take a walk
far, up to the woods, already before
long.

"An August Afternoon" by Bronislaw Maj, from A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry, edited by Czeslaw Milosz. Translated from the original Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass. © Mariner Books, 1998.

Art credit: "Night on Mt. Lubon," photograph by Tlapp, taken on 2009/10/08 in Luboń Wielki, Szlak pieszy żółty, Poland (originally color).