SONG ON PORCELAIN

From the Polish of Czeslaw Milosz

Rose-colored cup and saucer,

Flowery demitasses:

They lie beside the river

Where an armored column passes.

Winds from across the meadow

Sprinkle the banks with down;

A torn apple tree’s shadow

Falls on the muddy path;

The ground everywhere is strewn

With bits of brittle froth—

Of all things broken and lost

The porcelain troubles me most.

Before the first red tones

Begin to warm the sky

The earth wakes up, and moans.

It is the small sad cry

Of cups and saucers cracking,

The masters’ precious dream

Of roses, of mowers raking

And shepherds on the lawn.

The black underground stream

Swallows the frozen swan.

This morning, as I walked past

The porcelain troubled me most.

The blackened plain spreads out

To where the horizon blurs

In a litter of handle and spout,

A lively pulp that stirs

And crunches under my feet.

Pretty, useless foam:

Your stained colors are sweet—

Some bloodstained, in dirty waves

Flecking the fresh black loam

In the mounds of these new graves.

In sorrow and pain and cost

The porcelain troubles me most.