Lament

In memory of my mother

And now she has brown clouds of roots overhead
a rank lily of salt on her temples a rosary of sand
and sails on the bottom of a boat in a foamy mist

a mile where there is a bend in the river
- visible - invisible - like the light on a wave
she is truly no different - abandoned like us all.



Zbigniew Herbert
The Collected Poems 1956 - 1998
Ecco, 2007
Tradução inglesa de Alissa Valles