Let the sad terrestrials remember me,
recognize me and salute: the thistle and the tall nettle,
and the childhood enemy, belladonna.
-O. V. DE L. MILOSZ, “Les Terrains Vagues”
The thistle, the nettle, the burdock, and belladonna
Have a future. Theirs are wastelands
And rusty railroad tracks, the sky, silence.
Who shall I be for men many generations later?
When, after the clamor of tongues, the award goes to silence?
I was to be redeemed by the gift of arranging words
But must be prepared for an earth without grammar,
For the thistle, the nettle, the burdock, and the belladonna,
And a small wind above them, a sleepy cloud, silence.