CHAIN 10

40
II
In the noon-hot air of Brajčino Valley
where all memory disintegrates, and everything
in the blending of plant parts and the light
transforms itself from scentlessness to scent,
I walk from leaf to leaf, going back,
setting them on the nettles of my childhood land,
nature’s most divine traps,
which capture what once flew away as days.
Here sits the admiral in its cocoon
as from a spring-green, glutted caterpillar
it transforms itself to what we call a spirit
so that, like other summers’ butterflies,
it can bring the dense crimson color of life
up from the bitter underground cave.
—SN (literal translation)