A Leaf

A Leaf

A leaf, one of the last, parts from a maple branch:
it is spinning in the transparent air of October, falls
on a heap of others, stops, fades. No one
admired its entrancing struggle with the wind,
followed its flight, no one will distinguish it now
as it lies among the other leaves, no one saw
what I did. I am
the only one.

Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass.
"A Leaf" by Bronislaw Maj from A Book of Luminous Things. An International Anthology of Poetry. English translation copyright © 1996 by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass. Reprinted with permission of Harcourt, Inc.