Summer - Óndra Łysohorsky

A rocky slope, all overgrown with pine trees

Looks musing down the frothy Ostravitsa.

The summer ripens. Through the crowded branches

The midday sun drifts onto tallgrown grasses.

A net of shadows creeps over your body,

The sky is shining in a gentian blue.

My hand caresses dreamily your rye-ripe

Blond hair, to surging rhythms of the waves.

It feels as though I stroke warm, ripening peaches

In summerheat, on a Vesuvian slope.

I close my eyes. The glowing gulf of Naples.

The heaving billows. Midday. Seagulls’ cries.

Here too, by the Beskides, the cries of seagulls

Hang over the white, foaming Ostravitsa,

Over the quiet ponds, hemmed in by birches,

Light dancers in the movement of the wind.

The seagulls cry. O happiness, in spite of

Tall pine trees glancing anxiously on coalpits.

You speak. I hear the language of our fathers,

Soft as the language of the seas at noon.

Jan Hovjacký - River Ostravice
Source: https://flic.kr/p/2cv99yT

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Óndra Łysohorsky [real name Ervín Goj] (1905 - 1989) Czech Republic

Translated by Lydia Pasternak Slater

Source: Visegrad Magic Cube