A Girl Threw an Apple to a Cloud. Anonymous, from the 17th century

A girl threw an apple to a cloud,

And the cloud kept the apple.

The girl prayed to all the clouds:

Brother clouds, give me back my golden apple.

The guests have arrived:

My mother’s brothers and my uncles.

Their horses are wild like mountain fairies.

When they tread the dust

The dust doesn’t rise.

When they tread on water,

Their hooves don’t get wet.

TRANSLATED FROM THE SERBIAN BY CHARLES SIMIC

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From “World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time,” edited by Katharine Washburn, John S. Major and Clifton Fadiman (W.W. Norton: 1,338 pp., $45)