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.