I DON'T KNOW WHAT PRAYER IS

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

---Mary Oliver (From "The summer day"; New and Selected Poems 1992)

To ostatnia niedziela ( This is the Last Sunday )

The weary sun
Gently parted with the sea,
At this hour you declared,
There is no love.

I was saddened slightly -
Without anguish, without sorrow
At this hour resounded
Your words.

As we part, I will not be angry,
The fault lies with me and you.

The weary sun
Gently parted with the sea,
At this hour you declared,
There is no love.

--- Zenon Friedwald

Migrating Birds

That summer with its total lie;
O pang we learned at autumn's hands.
Under the cloudscape, slow and high,
A blackwing bird before my eye
Wheeling for southern lands.

The wildgeese magicked into flight,
The clamoring cries of cranes that soar
Over the land in gilded light.
And then the shadow pulled down tight
In winter blackout till they trek once more.

Sensitive heart, senses laid bare!
You have no nest in east or west,
Landsick and restless here as there.
Just learn to love life everywhere
Or what is left of life and rest.

--- Hubert van Herreweghen
Translated by A.Z. Foreman