ABOVE US

By Julia Hartwig

Boys kicking a ball on a vast square beneath an obelisk

and the apocalyptic sky at sunset to the rear

Why the sudden menace in this view

as if someone wished to turn it all to red dust

The sun already knows And the sky knows it too

And the water in the river knows

Music bursts from the loudspeakers like wild laughter

Only a star high above us

stands lost in thought with a finger to its lips

*

TRANSLATED FROM THE POLISH BY STANISLAW BARANCZAK AND CLARE CAVANAGH

From “A Book of Luminous Things,” edited by Czeslaw Milosz (Harcourt Brace: 320 pp., $26)