My comments

[FrodeauxB at aol.com]

Souvenir of the Ancient World

 by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, translated by Mark Strand 


Clara strolled in the garden with the children.

The sky was green over the grass,

the water was golden under the bridges,

other elements were blue and rose and orange,

a policeman smiled, bicycles passed,

a girl stepped onto the lawn to catch a bird,

the whole world—Germany, China—

             All was quiet around Clara. 

The children looked at the sky: it was not forbidden.

Mouth, nose, eyes were open. There was no danger.

What Clara feared were the flu, the heat, the insects.

Clara feared missing the eleven o'clock trolley,

waiting for letters slow to arrive,

not always being able to wear a new dress. But

she strolled in the garden, in the morning! 

They had gardens, they had mornings in those days! 

  

Incantation

 by Czeslaw Milosz, translated by the author and Robert Pinsky
 

Human reason is beautiful and invincible.

No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,

No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.

It establishes the universal ideas in language, 

And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice

With capital letters, lie and oppression with small.

It puts what should be above things as they are,

It is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope.

It does not know Jew from Greek or slave from master,

Giving us the estate of the world to manage.

It saves austere and transparent phrases

>From the filthy discord of tortured words.

It says that everything is new under the sun,

Opens the congealed fist of the past.

Beautiful and very young are Philo-Sophia

And poetry, her ally in the service of the good.

As late as yesterday Nature celebrated their birth,

The news was brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo,

Their friendship will be glorious, their time has no limit,

Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction. 





I find other words best express my some of feelings. The rest are under 
development.
God Bless America and single malt scotch.

TTFN

frodeauxb