TRUE LOVE - Wisława Szymborska (Translation in Unknown Edition)

True love. Is it normal,
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?

 

Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
drawn randomly from millions, but convinced
it had to happen this way— in reward for what?

    For nothing.

The light descends from nowhere.
Why on these two and not on others?
Doesn’t this outrage justice? Yes it does.
Doesn’t it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

 

Look at the happy couple.
Couldn’t they at least try to hide it,
fake a little depression for their friends’ sake?
Listen to them laughing— it’s an insult.
The language they use— deceptively clear.
And their little celebrations, rituals,
the elaborate mutual routines—
it’s obviously a plot behind the human race’s back!

 

It’s hard even to guess how far things might go
if people start to follow their example.
What could religion and poetry count on?
What would be remembered? What renounced?
Who’d want to stay within bounds?

 

True love. Is it really necessary?
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
like a scandal in Life’s highest circles.
Perfectly good children are born without its help.
It couldn’t populate the planet in a million years,
it comes along so rarely.

 

Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there’s no such thing.

 

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

First Love - Wisława Szymborska (Translation By Clare Cavanagh & Stanislaw Baranczak)

They say

the first love's most important.

That's very romantic,

but not my experience.

 

Something was and wasn't there between us,

something went on and went away.

 

My hands never tremble

when I stumble on silly keepsakes

and a sheaf of letters tied with string

— not even ribbon.

 

Our only meeting after years:

two chairs chatting

at a chilly table.

 

Other loves

still breathe deep inside me.

This one's too short of breath even to sigh.

 

Yet just exactly as it is,

it does what the others still can't manage:

unremembered,

not even seen in dreams,

it introduces me to death.

CONVERSATION WITH A STONE - Wisława Szymborska

I knock at the stone's front door.

“It's only me, let me come in.

I want to enter your insides,

have a look round,

breathe my fill of you.”

“Go away,” says the stone.       

“I'm shut tight.

Even if you break me to pieces,

we'll all still be closed.

You can grind us to sand,

we still won't let you in.”

I knock at the stone's front door.

“It's only me, let me come in.

I've come out of pure curiosity.

Only life can quench it.

I mean to stroll through your palace,

then go calling on a leaf, a drop of water.

I don't have much time.

My mortality should touch you.”

“I'm made of stone,” says the stone,

“and must therefore keep a straight face.

Go away.

I don't have the muscles to laugh.”

I knock at the stone's front door.

“It's only me, let me come in.

I hear you have great empty halls inside you,

unseen, their beauty in vain,

soundless, not echoing anyone's steps.

Admit you don't know them well yourself.”

“Great and empty, true enough,” says the stone,

“but there isn't any room.

Beautiful, perhaps, but not to the taste

of your poor senses.

You may get to know me, but you'll never know me through.

My whole surface is turned toward you,

all my insides turned away.”

I knock at the stone's front door.

“It's only me, let me come in.

I don't seek refuge for eternity.

I'm not unhappy.

I'm not homeless.

My world is worth returning to.

I'll enter and exit empty-handed.

And my proof I was there

will be only words,

which no one will believe.”

“You shall not enter,” says the stone.

“You lack the sense of taking part.

No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.

Even sight heightened to become all-seeing

will do you no good without a sense of taking part.

You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what that sense

      should be,

only its seed, imagination.”

I knock at the stone's front door.

“It's only me, let me come in.

I haven't got two thousand centuries,

so let me come under your roof.”

“If you don't believe me,” says the stone,

“just ask the leaf, it will tell you the same.

Ask a drop of water, it will say what the leaf has said.

And, finally, ask a hair from your own head.

I am bursting with laughter, yes, laughter, vast laughter,

although I don't know how to laugh.”

I knock at the stone's front door.

“It's only me, let me come in.”

“I don't have a door,” says the stone.

Thank-You Note - Wisława Szymborska (Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak)

I owe a lot

to those I do not love.

Relief in accepting

others care for them more.

Joy that I am not

wolf to their sheep.

Peace be with them

for with them I am free

––love neither gives

nor knows how to take these things.

I don't wait for them

from window to door.

Almost as patient

as a sun dial,

I understand

what love never could.

I forgive

what love never would.

Between rendezvous and letter

no eternity passes,

only a few days or weeks.

Our trips always turn out well:

concerts are enjoyed,

cathedrals toured,

landscapes in focus.

And when seven rivers and mountains

come between us,

they are the rivers and mountains

found on any map.

The credit's theirs

if I live in three dimensions,

in a non-lyrical and non-rhetorical space,

with a real, ever-shifting horizon.

They don't even know

how much they carry in their empty hands.

"I owe them nothing,"

love would have said

on this open topic.