Your Sunday Poem

A good day to share a little Wislawa Szymborska, from, "Monologue of a Dog."

Clouds

I'd have to be really quick
to describe clouds --
a split second's enough
for them to start being something else.

Their trademark:
they don't repeat a single
shape, shade, pose, arrangement.

Unburdened by memory of any kind,
they float easily over the facts.

What on earth could they bear witness to?
They scatter whenever something happens.

Compared to clouds,
life rests on solid ground,
practically permanent, almost eternal.

Next to clouds
even a stone seems like a brother,
someone you can trust,
while they're just distant, flighty cousins.

Let people exist if they want,
and then die, one after another:
clouds simply don't care
what they're up to
down there.

And so their haughty fleet
cruises smoothly over your whole life
and mine, still incomplete.

They aren't obliged to vanish when we're gone.
They don't have to be seen while sailing on.

Your Sunday Poem

By Wislawa Szymborska, from the March 8 New York Review of Books.  Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak.

Hard Life With Memory

I'm a poor audience for my memory.
She wants me to attend her voice nonstop,
but I fidget, fuss,
listen and don't,
step out, come back, then leave again.

She wants all my time and attention.
She's got no problem when I sleep.
The day's a different matter, which upsets her.

She thrusts old letters, snapshots at me eagerly,
stirs up events both important and un-,
turns my eyes to overlooked views,
peoples them with my dead.

In her stories I'm always younger,
Which is nice, but why always the same story.
Every mirror holds different news for me.

She gets angry when I shrug my shoulders.
And takes revenge by hauling out old errors,
weighty, but easily forgotten.
Looks into my eyes, checks my reaction.
Then comforts me, it could be worse.

She wants me to live only for her and with her.
Ideally in a dark, locked room,
but my plans still feature today's sun,
clouds in progress, ongoing roads.

At times I get fed up with her.
I suggest a separation.  From now to eternity.
Then she smiles at me with pity,
since she knows it would be the end of me too.

Your Sunday Poem

Wislawa Szymborska died a few days ago.  The poetry world will be a far emptier place without her.  But we have her wonderful work still with us.  Celebrate her life.  Go to the bookstore to buy a volume of her work. "Poems New and Collected," would be a good start.  It will be a nice gift to yourself.  Read a few poems during a break in the Superbowl.  Szymborska would have taken delight in that.  Might have even written a poem about it.

Nothing's 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.

Your Sunday Poem

This charmer by Wislawa Szymborska, from "Monologue of the Dog."

A Little Girl Tugs At The Tablecloth

She's been in this world for over a year,
and in this world not everything's been examined
and taken in hand.

The subject of today's investigation
is things that don't move by themselves.

They need to be helped along,
shoved, shifted,
taken from their place and relocated.

They don't all want to go, e.g., the bookshelf,
the cupboard, the unyielding walls, the table.

But the table cloth on the stubborn table
-- when well-seized by its hems --
manifests a willingness to travel.

And the glasses, plates,
creamer, spoons, bowl,
are fairly shaking with desire.

Your Sunday Poem

This from “View with a grain of sand,” selected poems by Wislawa Szymborska.

Family Album

No one in this family has ever died of love.

No food for myth and nothing magisterial.

Consumptive Romeos? Juliets diptherial?

A doddering second childhood was enough.

No death-defying vigils, love-struck poses

over unrequited letters strewn with tears!

Here, in conclusion, as scheduled, appears

a portly, pince-nez’d neighbor bearing roses.

No suffocation-in-the-closet gaffes

because the cuckold returned home too early!

Those frills or furbelows, however flounced and whirly,

barred no one from the family photographs.

No Bosch-like hell within their souls, no wretches

found bleeding in the garden, shirts in stains!

(True, some did die with bullets in their brains,

for other reasons, tough, and on field stretchers.)

Even this belle with rapturous coiffure

who may have danced till dawn – but nothing smarter –

hemorrhaged to be better world, bien sur,

but not to taunt or hurt you, slick-haired partner.

For others, Death was mad and monumental –

not for these citizens of a sepia past.

Their griefs turned into smiles, their days flew fast,

their vanishing was due to influenza.