No, you didn't know, Mother

No, you didn't know, Mother, with your labors swollen as a loaf, that I'd be laughing in the light near the edge of these fir-trees: that I'd be the happiest of Brabant-born men with this very small bit of moon received at birth; that I'd make your face the most familiar sun ever to shine down on the dusty wheat of a village; that I'd turn your hair, just as rain does, into threads of June light binding earth and sky together again. No, you didn't know, Mother, that in the very heart of your province I would one day become the prince of your loveliest winter stories.

Translated from the French by Norma Farber.m