ENCOUNTER
We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going.
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

-Czeslaw Milosz, translated by Lillian Vallee

Berklee’s poetry Walk was laid in October 2003 along Edison Street between Shattuck and Milvia Streets. The route includes 128 metal plates with excerpts from songs, each of which is related in one way or another to the city of Berkeley.

The current plaque features a poem written by the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. Milosz was a professor of Slavic languages at the University of Berkeley. The poem was translated by Lillian Vallee, a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages at the University of Berkeley