Czeslaw Milosz: "Encounter"

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

                                                         Wilno, 1936

"Encounter" by Czeslaw Milosz, from The Collected Poems, 1931-1987 (Ecco Press, 1988). Text as presented by the Poetry Foundation.

Art credit: Photograph of "a brown hare at dawn in Norfolk, [England," taken by Ian Paul Haskell.