Midday

Kornelijus Platelis
A light wind ripples through the wild poppy
Blossoms, brushes across my face
With the fragrance of drying straw, reminding me
Of love's promises in the shade of blooming lindens.
The clouds are like tangled bodies
On pale blue sheets...
I asked suddenly:
Midday, where is your essence?
And it answered me: in this grass among blossoming
Wild poppies in the skull of a sitting man,
In that skull are many gray cells, in those
Cells – many words, among those words – one
Which is my essence, but no one
Knows it: not that man nor I.
translated by Jonas Zdanys