White Sails

 by Adam Zagajewski

Eugène Delacroix watched

the steamships on the Canal La Manche,

which had slowly, systematically begun

to replace the frigates with their billowing white sails,

and he sadly noted in his diary:

everything around us falls prey to degradation,

the world's beauty vanishes for good;

new inventions turn up

ceaselessly, they may be useful,

but they're endlessly banal

(iron railroads, for example,

locomotives heavy as a hangman's hand).

He himself painted fine horses and fierce lions,

with muscles taut under their short coats,

and the uniforms of Spahis, a lot of red, which

could be blood or exotic textiles,

and light dancing on a saber's blade

—but now only the machines remained,

gray machines and oil stains

on the sand, on the rubbish (but also blood).

There's so much new reality, 

and the marvelous has gotten shy,

it's hard to locate, to remember,

to record, but still the high,

white, skyscraping clouds,

proud, haughty cumuli, they sail

over France and over Germany and over Poland,

they sail over us, faithful migrating birds

hide in them, cranes and bullfinches,

swallows dwell in them, orioles, swifts

and also the iron ships of the air, 

which kill or save us.

They circle overhead, 

death and salvation.