Wandering

From the Polish. 

We were vacationing with friends: a writer from the States, 
whose poems measure justice, and an actor 
from Warsaw, his face open to both good and evil guests; 
it was in a sheer, deep valley of the young Rodan, 
a sweltering late August day, one of those days 
when autumn wakens from its catnap in the forest's depths. 
We tried to find the spot we remembered 
so clearly from the photo—the proud tower, secluded, 
full of solitude, elegies, and sonnets, poetry's tower, 

but new suburbs surrounded us, 
white houses, and cars 
as clean as a bureaucrat's conscience; 
children walked their dogs, 
dogs walked their adults, 
in gardens roses awaited 
the gardener's shears. 

We were among friends, bees frantically 
built frail walls for their winter homes, 
on mild, musing hillsides wine was gathered 
like a crimson mountain stream, embankments of wild dreams. 
We made our pilgrimage to Rilke's tower, 
which had become a strange cathedral, 
and our journeying, seeking, wandering 
seemed almost blissful, joyous uncertainty, bewilderment 
revived us, was benign, even crucial, 

and when at last, after a long while, 
we found the tower 
just as it had been in the photo, 
uncertainty vanished, 
and only stones remained, 
wildflowers, friendship, 
and the light ash of melancholy.