Autumn BY ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI TRANSLATED BY RENATA GORCZYNSKI

Autumn is always too early. The peonies are still blooming, bees    are still working out ideal states, and the cold bayonets of autumn    suddenly glint in the fields and the wind rages. What is its origin? Why should it destroy    dreams, arbors, memories? The alien enters the hushed woods,    anger advancing, insinuating plague;    woodsmoke, the raucous howls of Tatars. Autumn rips away leaves, names,    fruit, it covers the borders and paths,    extinguishes lamps and tapers; young    autumn, lips purpled, embraces    mortal creatures, stealing their existence. Sap flows, sacrificed blood, wine, oil, wild rivers, yellow rivers swollen with corpses, the curse flowing on: mud, lava, avalanche,    gush. Breathless autumn, racing, blue knives glinting in her glance. She scythes names like herbs with her keen    sickle, merciless in her blaze and her breath. Anonymous letter, terror,    Red Army.