After lengthy preparations
the great poet Basho begins his journey.
The very first day he happens
to walk past a sobbing child
abandoned by his parents.
He leaves him there, by the roadside,
because, he says, such is Heaven’s Will.
He walks on, northwards, toward the snow
and things unseen, unknown.
Slowly the imperfect cities’ sounds grow still,
only streams hold forth chaotically
while white clouds play at nothingness.
He hears an oriole’s song, delicate,
uncertain, like a prayer, like weeping.
—Adam Zagajewski
(translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh)
Adam Zagajewski was one of the most important Polish poets of the past five or six decades; he died on March 21, 2021. His translator, Clare Cavanagh, teaches Slavic Literature at Northwestern University.
