Poems New and Collected Read online

  Stockholm

  TRANSLATORS’ NOTE

  This book includes, in English translation, virtually all of Wisława Szymborska’s poetic work to date, beginning with her third collection, Calling Out to Yeti, which she herself considers her actual debut, and ending with her most recent poems published thus far only in the literary press. Calling Out to Yeti has been presented here in an ample selection. From the other six volumes, eight poems unfortunately had to be omitted (three from Salt, two from Could Have, and three from A Large Number) because of specific unsurmountable problems of a technical nature involved in the translation of each.

  Compared with our earlier publication, View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems by Wisława Szymborska (Harcourt, Inc., 1995), which consisted of 100 poems, this enlarged collection presents 64 more, most of them never translated into English before.

  We take this opportunity to extend our belated thanks to Charles Simic, Helen Vendler, and Drenka Willen, without whose encouragement and help View with a Grain of Sand and, by the same token, this book might never have come into being. Special thanks go to our enthusiastically supportive families, Anna M., Anna J., and Michael, as well as Mike and Marty.

  S. B. & C. C.

  from

  CALLING OUT TO YETI

  1957

  I’m Working on the World

  I’m working on the world,

  revised, improved edition,

  featuring fun for fools,

  blues for brooders,

  combs for bald pates,

  tricks for old dogs.

  Here’s one chapter: The Speech

  of Animals and Plants.

  Each species comes, of course,

  with its own dictionary.

  Even a simple “Hi there,”

  when traded with a fish,

  makes both the fish and you

  feel quite extraordinary.

  The long-suspected meanings

  of rustlings, chirps, and growls!

  Soliloquies of forests!

  The epic hoots of owls!

  Those crafty hedgehogs drafting

  aphorisms after dark,

  while we blindly believe

  they’re sleeping in the park!

  Time (Chapter Two) retains

  its sacred right to meddle

  in each earthly affair.

  Still, time’s unbounded power

  that makes a mountain crumble,

  moves seas, rotates a star,

  won’t be enough to tear

  lovers apart: they are

  too naked, too embraced,

  too much like timid sparrows.

  Old age is, in my book,

  the price that felons pay,

  so don’t whine that it’s steep:

  you’ll stay young if you’re good.

  Suffering (Chapter Three)

  doesn’t insult the body.

  Death? It comes in your sleep,

  exactly as it should.

  When it comes, you’ll be dreaming

  that you don’t need to breathe;

  that breathless silence is

  the music of the dark

  and it’s part of the rhythm

  to vanish like a spark.

  Only a death like that. A rose

  could prick you harder, I suppose;

  you’d feel more terror at the sound

  of petals falling to the ground.

  Only a world like that. To die

  just that much. And to live just so.

  And all the rest is Bach’s fugue, played

  for the time being

  on a saw.

  Classifieds

  WHOEVER’S found out what location

  compassion (heart’s imagination)

  can be contacted at these days,

  is herewith urged to name the place;

  and sing about it in full voice,

  and dance like crazy and rejoice

  beneath the frail birch that appears

  to be upon the verge of tears.

  I TEACH silence

  in all languages

  through intensive examination of:

  the starry sky,

  the Sinanthropus’ jaws,

  a grasshopper’s hop,

  an infant’s fingernails,

  plankton,

  a snowflake.

  I RESTORE lost love.

  Act now! Special offer!

  You lie on last year’s grass

  bathed in sunlight to the chin

  while winds of summers past

  caress your hair and seem

  to lead you in a dance.

  For further details, write: “Dream.”

  WANTED: someone to mourn

  the elderly who die

  alone in old folks’ homes.

  Applicants, don’t send forms

  or birth certificates.

  All papers will be torn,

  no receipts will be issued

  at this or later dates.

  FOR PROMISES made by my spouse,

  who’s tricked so many with his sweet

  colors and fragrances and sounds—

  dogs barking, guitars in the street—

  into believing that they still

  might conquer loneliness and fright,

  I cannot be responsible.

  Mr. Day’s widow, Mrs. Night.

  Greeting the Supersonics

  Faster than sound today,

  faster than light tomorrow,

  we’ll turn sound into the Tortoise

  and light into the Hare.

  Two venerable creatures

  from the ancient parable,

  a noble team, since ages past

  competing fair and square.

  You ran so many times

  across this lowly earth;

  now try another course,

  across the lofty blue.

  The track’s all yours. We won’t

  get in your way: by then

  we will have set off chasing

  ourselves rather than you.

  An Effort

  Alack and woe, oh song: you’re mocking me;

  try as I may, I’ll never be your red, red rose.

  A rose is a rose is a rose. And you know it.

  I worked to sprout leaves. I tried to take root.

  I held my breath to speed things up, and waited

  for the petals to enclose me.

  Merciless song, you leave me with my lone,

  nonconvertible, unmetamorphic body:

  I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.

  Four A.M.

  The hour between night and day.

  The hour between toss and turn.

  The hour of thirty-year-olds.

  The hour swept clean for roosters’ crowing.

  The hour when the earth takes back its warm embrace.

  The hour of cool drafts from extinguished stars.

  The hour of do-we-vanish-too-without-a-trace.

  Empty hour.

  Hollow. Vain.

  Rock bottom of all the other hours.

  No one feels fine at four a.m.

  If ants feel fine at four a.m.,

  we’re happy for the ants. And let five a.m. come

  if we’ve got to go on living.

  Still Life with a Balloon

  Returning memories?

  No, at the time of death

  I’d like to see lost objects

  return instead.

  Avalanches of gloves,

  coats, suitcases, umbrellas—

  come, and I’ll say at last:

  What good’s all this?

  Safety pins, two odd combs,

  a paper rose, a knife,

  some string—come, and I’ll say

  at last: I haven’t missed you.

  Please turn up, key, come out,

  wherever you’ve been hiding,

  in time for me to say:

  You’ve gotten rusty, f
riend!

  Downpours of affidavits,

  permits and questionnaires,

  rain down and I will say:

  I see the sun behind you.

  My watch, dropped in a river,

  bob up and let me seize you—

  then, face to face, I’ll say:

  Your so-called time is up.

  And lastly, toy balloon

  once kidnapped by the wind—

  come home, and I will say:

  There are no children here.

  Fly out the open window

  and into the wide world;

  let someone else shout “Look!”

  and I will cry.

  To My Friends

  Well-versed in the expanses

  that stretch from earth to stars,

  we get lost in the space

  from earth up to our skull.

  Intergalactic reaches

  divide sorrow from tears.

  En route from false to true

  you wither and grow dull.

  We are amused by jets,

  those crevices of silence

  wedged between flight and sound:

  “World record!” the world cheers.

  But we’ve seen faster takeoffs:

  their long-belated echo

  still wrenches us from sleep

  after so many years.

  Outside, a storm of voices:

  “We’re innocent,” they cry.

  We rush to open windows,

  lean out to catch their call.

  But then the voices break off.

  We watch the falling stars

  just as after a salvo

  plaster drops from the wall.

  Funeral (I)

  His skull, dug up from clay,

  rests in a marble tomb;

  sleep tight, medals, on pillows:

  now it’s got lots of room,

  that skull dug up from clay.

  They read off index cards:

  a) he has been/will be missed,

  b) go on, band, play the march,

  c) too bad he can’t see this.

  They read off index cards.

  Nation, be thankful now

  for blessings you possess:

  a being born just once

  has two graves nonetheless.

  Nation, be thankful now.

  Parades were plentiful:

  a thousand slide trombones,

  police for crowd control,

  bell-ringing for the bones.

  Parades were plentiful.

  Their eyes flicked heavenward

  for omens from above:

  a ray of light perhaps

  or a bomb-carrying dove.

  Their eyes flicked heavenward.

  Between them and the people,

  according to the plan,

  the trees alone would sing

  their silence on command.

  Between them and the people.

  Instead, bridges are drawn

  above a gorge of stone,

  its bed’s been smoothed for tanks,

  echoes await a moan.

  Instead, bridges are drawn.

  Still full of blood and hopes

  the people turn away,

  not knowing that bell ropes,

  like human hair, turn gray.

  Still full of blood and hopes.

  Brueghel’s Two Monkeys

  This is what I see in my dreams about final exams:

  two monkeys, chained to the floor, sit on the windowsill,

  the sky behind them flutters,

  the sea is taking its bath.

  The exam is History of Mankind.

  I stammer and hedge.

  One monkey stares and listens with mocking disdain,

  the other seems to be dreaming away—

  but when it’s clear I don’t know what to say

  he prompts me with a gentle

  clinking of his chain.

  Still

  Across the country’s plains

  sealed boxcars are carrying names:

  how long will they travel, how far,

  will they ever leave the boxcar—

  don’t ask, I can’t say, I don’t know.

  The name Nathan beats the wall with his fist,

  the name Isaac sings a mad hymn,

  the name Aaron is dying of thirst,

  the name Sarah begs water for him.

  Don’t jump from the boxcar, name David.

  In these lands you’re a name to avoid,

  you’re bound for defeat, you’re a sign

  pointing out those who must be destroyed.

  At least give your son a Slavic name:

  he’ll need it. Here people count hairs

  and examine the shape of your eyelids

  to tell right from wrong, “ours” from “theirs.”

  Don’t jump yet. Your son’s name will be Lech.

  Don’t jump yet. The time’s still not right.

  Don’t jump yet. The clattering wheels

  are mocked by the echoes of night.

  Clouds of people passed over this plain.

  Vast clouds, but they held little rain—

  just one tear, that’s a fact, just one tear.

  A dark forest. The tracks disappear.

  That’s-a-fact. The rail and the wheels.

  That’s-a-fact. A forest, no fields.

  That’s-a-fact. And their silence once more,

  that’s-a-fact, drums on my silent door.

  Atlantis

  They were or they weren’t.

  On an island or not.

  An ocean or not an ocean

  swallowed them up or it didn’t.

  Was there anyone to love anyone?

  Did anybody have someone to fight?

  Everything happened or it didn’t