nothings a gift

Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan.

I'm drowning in debts up to my ears.

I'll have to pay for myself

with my self,

give up my life for my life.

Here's how it's arranged:

The heart can be repossessed,

the liver, too,

and each single finger and toe.

Too late to tear up the terms,

my debts will be repaid,

and I'll be fleeced,

or, more precisely, flayed.

I move about the planet

in a crush of other debtors.

some are saddled with the burden

of paying off their wings.

Others must, willy-nilly,

account for every leaf.

Every tissue in us lies

on the debit side.

Not a tentacle or tendril

is for keeps.

The inventory, infinitely detailed,

implies we'll be left

not just empty-handed

but handless too.

I can't remember

where, when, and why

I let someone open

this account in my name.

We call the protest against this

the soul.

And it's the only item

not included on the list.

~ Wislawa Szymborska

translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

with thanks to  Death Deconstructed

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circus animals

Bears are stomping in perfect time.

A lion jumps through flaming hoops.

A whip cracks and the music grinds.

A monkey rides a bike in a yellow suit.

A whip cracks and the animals turn their glance.

Dogs dance in carefully measured movements.

An elephant walks with a pitcher in perfect balance.

Myself, I'm quite embarrassed, I, a human.

People didn't enjoy themselves that day.

You wouldn't know it from the clapping hands

though one hand elongated by a whip

cast a striking shadow on the sand.

~Wislawa Szymborska

from miracle fair

translation by Joanna Trzeciak

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the end and the beginning

After every war

someone has to clean up.

Things won't

straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble

to the side of the road,

so the corpse-filled wagons

can pass.

Someone has to get mired 

in scum and ashes,

sofa springs, 

splintered glass,

and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag a girder

to prop up a wall,

Someone has to glaze a window,

rehang a door.

Photogenic it's not,

and takes years,

All the cameras have left

for another war.

We'll need the bridges back,

and new railway stations.

Sleeves will go ragged

from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,

still recalls the way it was.

Someone else listens

and nods with unsevered head.

But already there are those nearby

starting to mill about 

who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes

 sometimes someone still unearths

rusted-out arguments

and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew

what was going on here 

must make way for 

those who know little.

And less than little.

And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown

causes and effects,

someone must be stretched out

blade of grass in his mouth

gazing at the clouds.

~ Wislawa Szymborska

from miracle fair

translation by Joanna Trzeciak

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view with a grain of sand

We call it a grain of sand

but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.

It does just fine without a name,

whether general, particular,

permanent, passing,

incorrect or apt.

Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it.

It doesn't feel itself seen and touched.

And that it fell on the windowsill

is only our experience, not its.

For it it's no different than falling on anything else

with no assurance that it's finished falling

or that it's falling still.

The window has a wonderful view of a lake

but the view doesn't view itself.

It exists in this world

colorless, shapeless,

soundless, odorless, and painless.

The lake's floor exists floorlessly

and its shore exists shorelessly.

Its water feels itself neither wet nor dry

and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural,

They splash deaf to their own noise

on pebbles neither large nor small.

And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless

in which the sun sets without setting at all

and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.

The wind ruffles it,  its only reason being

that it blows.

A second passes

A second second.

A third.

But they're three seconds only for us.

Time has passed like a courier with urgent news.

But that's just our simile.

The character's invented, his haste is make-believe,

his news inhuman.

~ Wislawa Szymborska

translated by Stanislaw Baraniczak and Clara Cavanagh

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a note

Life is the only way 

to get covered in leaves,

catch your breath on the sand,

rise on wings;

to be a dog,

or stroke its warm fur;

to tell pain

from everything it's not;

to squeeze inside events,

dawdle in views,

to seek the least of all possible mistakes.

An extraordinary chance

to remember for a moment

a conversation held

with the lamp switched off;

and if only once

to stumble on a stone,

end up drenched in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass;

and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;

and to keep on not knowing

something important.

~Wislawa Szymborska

from Monologue of a Dog

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