A Note from Wisława Szymborska

 

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.

 

-Wisława Szymborska

(tr. Claire Cavanagh and Stanisław Baranczak)

 

This is from Wisława Szymborska's book Moment of 2002. Szymborska was born in 1923, died in 2012, and won the Nobel Prize in 1996. It's not her only poem titled simply, 'A Note'. She's an old favorite of mine--sharp observers might notice I've used the photo before--and I didn't search that hard. But I got both my Covid booster and flu shot this morning and I'm feeling a bit done in. 

 

 

Wisława Szymborska's The Onion

 

The Onion

The onion, now that's something else.

Its innards don't exist.

Nothing but pure onionhood

fills this devout onionist.

Oniony on the inside,

onionesque it appears.

It follows its own daimonion

without our human tears.

Our skin is just a cover-up

for the land where none dare go,

an internal inferno,

the anathema of anatomy.

In an onion there's only onion

from its top to its toe,

onionymous monomania,

unanimous omninudity.

At peace, of a piece,

internally at rest.

Inside it, there's a smaller one

of undiminished worth.

The second holds a third one,

the third contains a fourth.

A centripetal fugue.

Polyphony compressed.

Nature's rotundest tummy,

its greatest success story,

the onion drapes itself in its

own aureoles of glory.

We hold veins, nerves, and fat,

secretions' secret sections.

Not for us such idiotic

onionoid perfections.

-Wisława Szymborska (tr. Claire Cavanaugh and Stanley Barańczak)

That poem just makes me giggle. 'Nature's rotundest tummy', 'daimonion'. Often the smaller one inside is not just of 'undiminished worth', it's even better. The outer layers are generally damaged or dry.

Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012) was a Polish Nobel Prize winner, best known as a poet. I've scheduled this post in advance, but I'm off-grid as this appears; I picked this, not just because it's fun, but also because I'm likely reading a rather large volume by another female Nobel Prize winner from Poland...

Poem For A Thursday: Szymborska

In Praise Of Feeling Bad About Yourself

The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean. 

A jackal doesn't understand remorse.
Lions and lice don't waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they're right? 

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
In every other way they're light. 

On this third planet of the sun
Among the signs of bestiality
A clear conscience is number one.

-Wislawa Szymborska 

(tr. Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak)

Wislawa Szymborska was a Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet who passed away in 2012. It's WIT (Women in Translation) Month!

Holds Upon Happiness, the originator of Poem For A Thursday, has previously featured a different poem of  Szymborska.