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by Wislawa Szymborska


  I began this project many years ago with my beloved friend, teacher, and mentor, the magnificent poet Stanisław Barańczak. I’ve had to finish it without him. In recent years his health has not permitted him to continue the collaboration that has been one of the great joys of my life. As I worked on alone, I asked myself continuously, “Would it be good enough for Stanisław?” I hope so.

  You don’t work so long on a poet without accruing a great many—generally wonderful—debts. Our extraordinary editor, Drenka Willen, took a chance on a little-known poet with an unpronounceable name several years before the Nobel Prize made Szymborska famous. She did it because she loved the poems, which Charles Simic first gave her in our English incarnation. Drenka’s critical acuity and her boundless sympathy for translators have buoyed us through the decades. How would I have made it through this volume without Drenka’s intelligence, her patience, her perfect pitch? I’ll never know. Several friends whom I met when I first met Szymborska herself, in Stockholm in 1996, have been invaluable guides through the years. Michał Rusinek, Tadeusz Nyczek, Krystyna and Ryszard Krynicki—all have aided, abetted, and assisted me in more ways than I can name. I’m indebted, too, to Larry Cooper’s meticulous editing in the final stages of this project.

  I could name many others. But I’ll conclude with just a few. The first is my best friend, our most ruthless critic, and our biggest fan, the dear and splendid Ania Barańczak. Then there are Mike and Martin Lopez. My son Martin was two when I met Wisława, and for many years I gave them the same presents. He outgrew them. She never did.

  An old friend once inscribed his scholarly book on Szymborska’s poetry as follows: “To Wisława, without whom this book could not have been written.” Here is my variation on his theme: “To Wisława, without whom this book would not exist. Thank you.”

  ­—Clare Cavanagh

  Translation Credits

  Poems translated by Clare Cavanagh

  Once we had the world backwards and forwards . . . ; Leaving the Movie Theater; Comic Love Poem; Black Song; In Trite Rhymes; Circus Animals; Questions You Ask Yourself; Lovers; Key; Night; Hania; Flagrance; Moment of Silence; Rehabilitation; I hear trumpets play the tune . . . ; Midsummer Night’s Dream; Dream; Poem in Honor; A Note; Pursuit; Nothingness unseamed itself for me too . . . ; The Old Turtle’s Dream; Military Parade; Apple Tree; Consolation; The Old Professor; Perspective; The Poet’s Nightmare; Distraction; Someone I’ve Been Watching for a While; Confessions of a Reading Machine; There Are Those Who; Chains; At the Airport; Compulsion; Everyone Sometime; Hand; Mirror; While Sleeping; Reciprocity; To My Own Poem; Map

  Poems translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak

  Nothing Twice; Buffo; Commemoration; Classifieds; To My Friends; Funeral (I); Brueghel’s Two Monkeys; Still; Greeting the Supersonics; Still Life with a Balloon; Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition; An Effort; Four A.M.; Atlantis; I’m Working on the World; The Monkey; Lesson; Museum; A Moment in Troy; Shadow; The Rest; Clochard; Vocabulary; Travel Elegy; Without a Title; An Unexpected Meeting; Golden Anniversary; Starvation Camp Near Jaslo; Parable; Ballad; Over Wine; Rubens’ Women; Coloratura; Bodybuilders’ Contest; Poetry Reading; Epitaph; Prologue to a Comedy; Likeness; I am too close . . . ; The Tower of Babel; Water; Synopsis; In Heraclitus’s River; Conversation with a Stone; The Joy of Writing; Memory Finally; Landscape; Family Album; Laughter; The Railroad Station; Alive; Born; Census; Soliloquy for Cassandra; A Byzantine Mosaic; Beheading; Pietà; Innocence; Vietnam; Written in a Hotel; A Film from the Sixties; Report from the Hospital; Returning Birds; Thomas Mann; Tarsier; To My Heart, on Sunday; The Acrobat; A Paleolithic Fertility Fetish; Cave; Motion; No End of Fun; Could Have; Falling from the Sky; Wrong Number; Theater Impressions; Voices; The Letters of the Dead; Old Folks’ Home; Advertisement; Lazarus Takes a Walk; Snapshot of a Crowd; Going Home; Discovery; Dinosaur Skeleton; A Speech at the Lost-and-Found; Astonishment; Birthday; Interview with a Child; Allegro ma Non Troppo; Autotomy; Frozen Motion; Certainty; The Classic; In Praise of Dreams; True Love; Under One Small Star; A Large Number; Thank-You Note; Psalm; Lot’s Wife; Seen from Above; Experiment; Smiles; The Terrorist, He’s Watching; A Medieval Miniature; Aging Opera Singer; In Praise of My Sister; Hermitage; Portrait of a Woman; Evaluation of an Unwritten Poem; Warning; The Onion; The Suicide’s Room; In Praise of Feeling Bad about Yourself; Life While-You-Wait; On the Banks of the Styx; Utopia; Pi; Stage Fright; Surplus; Archeology; View with a Grain of Sand; Clothes; On Death, Without Exaggeration; The Great Man’s House; In Broad Daylight; Our Ancestors’ Short Lives; Hitler’s First Photograph; The Century’s Decline; Children of Our Age; Tortures; Plotting with the Dead; Writing a Résumé; Funeral (II); An Opinion on the Question of Pornography; A Tale Begun; Into the Ark; Possibilities; Miracle Fair; The People on the Bridge; Sky; No Title Required; Some People Like Poetry; The End and the Beginning; Hatred; Reality Demands; The Real World; Elegiac Calculation; Cat in an Empty Apartment; Parting with a View; Séance; Love at First Sight; May 16, 1973; Maybe All This; Slapstick; Nothing’s a Gift; One Version of Events; We’re Extremely Fortunate; Moment; Among the Multitudes; Clouds; Negative; Receiver; The Three Oddest Words; The Silence of Plants; Plato, or Why; A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth; A Memory; Puddle; First Love; A Few Words on the Soul; Early Hour; In the Park; A Contribution to Statistics; Some People; Photograph from September 11; Return Baggage; The Ball; A Note; List; Everything; Absence; ABC; Highway Accident; The Day After—Without Us; An Occurrence; The Courtesy of the Blind; Monologue of a Dog Ensnared in History; An Interview with Atropos; Labyrinth; Greek Statue; In Fact Every Poem; Here; Thoughts That Visit Me on Busy Streets; An Idea; Teenager; Hard Life with Memory; Microcosmos; Foraminifera; Before a Journey; Divorce; Assassins; Example; Identification; Nonreading; Portrait from Memory; Dreams; In a Mail Coach; Ella in Heaven; Vermeer; Metaphysics

  Index of Titles and First Lines

  ABC, [>]

  Absence, [>]

  A Byzantine Mosaic, [>]

  A Contribution to Statistics, [>]

  Across the country’s plains, [>]

  A dead beetle lies on the path through the field, [>]

  A drop of water fell on my hand, [>]

  Advertisement, [>]

  A few clods of dirt, and his life will be forgotten, [>]

  A few minor changes, [>]

  A Few Words on the Soul, [>]

  A Film from the Sixties, [>]

  After every war, [>]

  Against a grayish sky, [>]

  A gale, [>]

  Aging Opera Singer, [>]

  A great joy: flower upon flower, [>]

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

  A Large Number, [>]

  A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth, [>]

  Alive, [>]

  Allegro ma Non Troppo, [>]

  A Medieval Miniature, [>]

  A Memory, [>]

  A Moment in Troy, [>]

  Among the Multitudes, [>]

  —and now a few steps, [>]

  And who’s this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe?, [>]

  An Effort, [>]

  An endless rain is just beginning, [>]

  A new star has been discovered, [>]

  An Idea, [>]

  An idea came to me, [>]

  An Interview with Atropos, [>]

  An Occurrence, [>]

  An odd planet, and those on it are odd, too, [>]

  An Opinion on the Question of Pornography, [>]

  A Note, [>], [>]

  An Unexpected Meeting, [>]

  A Paleolithic Fertility Fetish, [>]

  Apple Tree, [>]

  Archeology, [>]

  As a short subject before the main feature—, [>]

  A scorching day, a doghouse and a dog on a chain, [>]

  As long as nothing can be known for sure, [>]

  A Speech at the Lost-and-Found, [>]

  Assassins, [>]

  Astonishment, [>]

&nb
sp; A Tale Begun, [>]

  Atlantis, [>]

  At midnight, in an empty, hushed art gallery, [>]

  At the Airport, [>]

  Autotomy, [>]

  Ballad, [>]

  Before a Journey, [>]

  Beheading, [>]

  Beloved Brethren, [>]

  Best case scenario—, [>]

  Birthday, [>]

  Black Song, [>]

  Bodybuilders’ Contest, [>]

  Bookstores don’t provide, [>]

  Born, [>]

  Brueghel’s Two Monkeys, [>]

  Buffo, [>]

  Cat in an Empty Apartment, [>]

  Cave, [>]

  Census, [>]

  Certainty, [>]

  Chains, [>]

  Children of Our Age, [>]

  Circus Animals, [>]

  Classifieds, [>]

  Clochard, [>]

  Clothes, [>]

  Clouds, [>]

  Coloratura, [>]

  Comic Love Poem, [>]

  Commemoration, [>]

  Compulsion, [>]

  Conceived on a mattress made of human hair, [>]

  Confessions of a Reading Machine, [>]

  Consolation, [>]

  Conversation with a Stone, [>]

  Could Have, [>]

  Darwin., [>]

  Dear individual soul, this is the Styx, [>]

  Dear mermaids, it was bound to happen, [>]

  Décolletage comes from decollo, [>]

  Despite the geologists’ knowledge and craft, [>]

  Die—you can’t do that to a cat, [>]

  Dinosaur Skeleton, [>]

  Discovery, [>]

  Distraction, [>]

  Divorce, [>]

  Don’t take jesters into outer space, [>]

  Dream, [>]

  Dreams, [>]

  Dreams flickered on white canvas, [>]

  Early Hour, [>]

  Elegiac Calculation, [>]

  Ella in Heaven, [>]

  Epitaph, [>]

  Evaluation of an Unwritten Poem, [>]

  Everyone Sometime, [>]

  Everyone sometime has somebody close die, [>]

  Everything, [>]

  Everything seems to agree, [>]

  Everything’s mine but just on loan, [>]

  Evicted from the Garden long before, [>]

  Example, [>]

  Experiment, [>]

  Faces, [>]

  Falling from the Sky, [>]

  Family Album, [>]

  Faster than sound today, [>]

  Few of them made it to thirty, [>]

  First, our love will die, alas, [>]

  First Love, [>]

  Flagrance, [>]

  Flat as the table, [>]

  Foraminifera, [>]

  For me the tragedy’s most important act is the sixth:, [>]

  For the kids the first ending of the world, [>]

  For unclear reasons, [>]

  Four A.M., [>]

  Four billion people on this earth, [>]

  From scalp to sole, all muscles in slow motion, [>]

  From trapeze to, [>]

  Frozen Motion, [>]

  Funeral (I), [>]

  Funeral (II), [>]

  Going Home, [>]

  Golden Anniversary, [>]

  Greek Statue, [>]

  Greeting the Supersonics, [>]

  Ground-to-ground, [>]

  Hand, [>]

  Hania, [>]

  Happenstance reveals its tricks, [>]

  Hard Life with Memory, [>]

  Hatred, [>]

  Hear the ballad “Murdered Woman, [>]

  He came home. Said nothing, [>]

  He doesn’t arrive en masse, [>]

  He glanced, gave me extra charm, [>]

  He made himself a glass violin so he could see what music, [>]

  Here, [>]

  Here are plates but no appetite, [>]

  Here comes Her Highness—well, you know who I mean, [>]

  Here I am, Cassandra, [>]

  Here lies, old-fashioned as parentheses, [>]

  Her mad songs over, Ophelia darts out, [>]

  Hermitage, [>]

  He would, [>]

  —Hey! the little boy wonders, [>]

  Highway Accident, [>]

  His skull, dug up from clay, [>]

  Hitler’s First Photograph, [>]

  How many of those I knew, [>]

  I, Number Three Plus Four Divided by Seven, [>]

  I am a tarsier and a tarsier’s son, [>]

  I am too close for him to dream of me, [>]

  I am who I am, [>]

  I asked him about the old days, [>]

  I believe in the great discovery, [>]

  I can’t speak for elsewhere, [>]

  Identification, [>]

  I’d have to be really quick, [>]

  I don’t reproach the spring, [>]

  I dreamed I was looking for something, [>]

  I dream that I’m woken, [>]

  If the gods’ favorites die young—, [>]

  If there are angels, [>]

  If we’d been allowed to choose, [>]

  I hear trumpets play the tune, [>]

  I knock at the stone’s front door, [>]

  I know I’ll be greeted by silence, but still, [>]

  I’ll bet you think the room was empty, [>]

  I’ll never find out now, [>]

  I lost a few goddesses while moving south to north, [>]

  I’m a poor audience for my memory, [>]

  I’m a tranquilizer, [>]

  I misbehaved in the cosmos yesterday, [>]

  I’m still asleep, [>]

  I’m Working on the World, [>]

  In a Mail Coach, [>]

  In Broad Daylight, [>]

  In danger, the holothurian cuts itself in two, [>]

  In Fact Every Poem, [>]

  In heavenly May, under an apple tree, lovely, [>]

  In Heraclitus’s River, [>]

  In my dreams, [>]

  Innocence, [>]

  In Paris, on a day that stayed morning until dusk, [>]

  In Praise of Dreams, [>]

  In Praise of Feeling Bad about Yourself, [>]

  In Praise of My Sister, [>]

  Interview with a Child, [>]

  In the old master’s landscape, [>]

  In the Park, [>]

  In the poem’s opening words, [>]

  In the snapshot of a crowd, [>]

  In the town where the hero was born you may:, [>]

  In this quiet we can still hear, [>]

  Into the Ark, [>]

  In Trite Rhymes, [>]

  I owe so much, [>]

  I prefer movies, [>]

  I remember that childhood fear well, [>]

  I should have begun with this: the sky, [>]

  Island where all becomes clear, [>]

  It can’t take a joke, [>]

  It could have happened, [>]

  It has come to this: I’m sitting under a tree, [>]

  It’s been and gone, [>]

  It’s good you came—she says, [>]

  I’ve made a list of questions, [>]

  I walk on the slope of a hill gone green, [>]

  I wear beads around my neck, [>]

  I wield imagination’s oldest right, [>]

  Job, sorely tried in both flesh and possessions, curses man’s fate, [>]

  Just imagine what I dreamed, [>]

  Key, [>]

  Kyoto is fortunate, [>]

  Labyrinth, [>]

  Landscape, [>]

  “La Pologne? La Pologne? Isn’t it terribly cold there?” she asked, [>]

  Laughter, [>]

  Lazarus Takes a Walk, [>]

  Leaving the Movie Theater, [>]

  Lesson, [>]

  Life, you’re beautiful (I say), [>]

  Life is the only way, [>]

  Life While-You-Wait, [>]

  Likeness, [>]

  List, [>]

  Litt
le girls—, [>]

  Lot’s Wife, [>]

  Love at First Sight, [>]

  Lovers, [>]

  Madame Atropos?, [>]

  Magic is dying out, although the heights, [>]

  Map, [>]

  May 16, 1973, [>]

  Maybe All This, [>]

  Me—a teenager?, [>]

  Memory Finally, [>]

  Memory’s finally found what it was after, [>]

  Metaphysics, [>]

  Microcosmos, [>]

  Midsummer Night’s Dream, [>]

  Military Parade, [>]

  Miracle Fair, [>]

  Mirror, [>]

  Moment, [>]

  Moment of Silence, [>]

  Monologue of a Dog Ensnared in History, [>]

  Motion, [>]

  Museum, [>]

  My apologies to chance for calling it necessity, [>]

  My fallen, my turned to dust, my earth, [>]

  My imagination sentenced me to this journey, [>]

  My nonarrival in the city of N., [>]

  My shadow is a fool whose feelings, [>]

  My sister doesn’t write poems, [>]

  Negative, [>]

  Night, [>]

  No End of Fun, [>]

  Nonreading, [>]

  No one in this family has ever died of love, [>]

  Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition, [>]

  Nothing can ever happen twice, [>]

  Nothing has changed, [>]

  Nothingness unseamed itself for me too, [>]

  Nothing’s a Gift, [>]

  Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan, [>]

  Nothing Twice, [>]

  No Title Required, [>]

  Now see, here’s Hania, the good servant, [>]

  Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states!, [>]

  Old Folks’ Home, [>]

  Once we had the world backwards and forwards:, [>]

  On Death, Without Exaggeration, [>]

  One of those many dates, [>]

  One Version of Events, [>]

  On the Banks of the Styx, [>]

  On the hill where Troy once stood, [>

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