Map (41 page)

Our Ancestors' Short Lives,
[>]

Our one-sided acquaintance,
[>]

Our twentieth century was going to improve on the others,
[>]

Out of a hundred people,
[>]

Over Wine,
[>]

 

Parable,
[>]

Parting with a View,
[>]

Perspective,
[>]

Photograph from September
[>]
,
[>]

Pi,
[>]

Pietà,
[>]

Plato, or Why,
[>]

Plotting with the Dead,
[>]

Poem in Honor,
[>]

Poetry Reading,
[>]

Poets and writers,
[>]

Poised beneath a twig-wigged tree,
[>]

Portrait from Memory,
[>]

Portrait of a Woman,
[>]

Possibilities,
[>]

Prologue to a Comedy,
[>]

Psalm,
[>]

Puddle,
[>]

Pursuit,
[>]

 

Questions You Ask Yourself,
[>]

 

Reality Demands,
[>]

Receiver,
[>]

Reciprocity,
[>]

Rehabilitation,
[>]

Report from the Hospital,
[>]

Return Baggage,
[>]

Returning Birds,
[>]

Returning memories?,
[>]

Rubens' Women,
[>]

 

Séance,
[>]

See how efficient it still is,
[>]

Seen from Above,
[>]

Shadow,
[>]

She must be a variety,
[>]

She prayed to God,
[>]

She's been in this world for over a year,
[>]

Sky,
[>]

Sky, earth, morning,
[>]

Slapstick,
[>]

Smiles,
[>]

Snapshot of a Crowd,
[>]

So he once was. He invented zero,
[>]

So here we are, the naked lovers,
[>]

So he's got to have happiness,
[>]

Soliloquy for Cassandra,
[>]

So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum,
[>]

Some fishermen pulled a bottle from the deep. It held a piece of,
[>]

Someone I've Been Watching for a While,
[>]

Some people—,
[>]

Some People,
[>]

Some people flee some other people,
[>]

Some People Like Poetry,
[>]

So much world all at once—how it rustles and bustles!,
[>]

“so suddenly, who could have seen it coming,”
[>]

So these are the Himalayas,
[>]

So this is his mother,
[>]

So what did Isaac do?,
[>]

Stage Fright,
[>]

Starvation Camp Near Jaslo,
[>]

Still,
[>]

Still Life with a Balloon,
[>]

Subject
King Alexander
predicate
cuts
direct,
[>]

Surplus,
[>]

Synopsis,
[>]

 

Tarsier,
[>]

Teenager,
[>]

Thank you, my heart:,
[>]

Thank-You Note,
[>]

The Acrobat,
[>]

The admirable number pi:,
[>]

Theater Impressions,
[>]

The Ball,
[>]

The bomb in the bar will explode at thirteen twenty,
[>]

The buzzard never says it is to blame,
[>]

The cemetery plot for tiny graves,
[>]

The Century's Decline,
[>]

The Classic,
[>]

The commonplace miracle:,
[>]

The Courtesy of the Blind,
[>]

The Day After
—
Without Us,
[>]

The End and the Beginning,
[>]

The first display case,
[>]

The forest in the Vosges Mountains shines,
[>]

The Great Man's House,
[>]

The Great Mother has no face,
[>]

The hour between night and day,
[>]

The Joy of Writing,
[>]

The key was here and now it's gone,
[>]

The Letters of the Dead,
[>]

The little girl I was—,
[>]

The long-drawn saxophonist, the saxophonist joker,
[>]

The marble tells us in golden syllables:,
[>]

The marching bears hit all their notes,
[>]

The Master hasn't been among us long,
[>]

The Monkey,
[>]

The morning is expected to be cool and foggy,
[>]

The Old Professor,
[>]

The old turtle dreams about a lettuce leaf,
[>]

The Old Turtle's Dream,
[>]

The Onion,
[>]

The onion, now that's something else,
[>]

The People on the Bridge,
[>]

The poet reads his lines to the blind,
[>]

The Poet's Nightmare,
[>]

The professor has died three times now,
[>]

The Railroad Station,
[>]

The Real World,
[>]

The real world doesn't take flight,
[>]

There are catalogs of catalogs,
[>]

There are dogs and dogs, I was among the chosen,
[>]

There Are Those Who,
[>]

There are those who conduct life more precisely,
[>]

There's nothing more debauched than thinking,
[>]

There's nothing on the walls,
[>]

The Rest,
[>]

These days we just hold him,
[>]

The Silence of Plants,
[>]

The Suicide's Room,
[>]

The Terrorist, He's Watching,
[>]

The Three Oddest Words,
[>]

The Tower of Babel,
[>]

The two of them were left so long alone,
[>]

The world is never ready,
[>]

The world would rather
see
hope than just hear,
[>]

They call it: space,
[>]

They jumped from the burning floors—,
[>]

They made love in a hazel grove,
[>]

They must have been different once,
[>]

They passed like strangers,
[>]

They're both convinced,
[>]

They run to each other with open arms,
[>]

They say,
[>]

They say I looked back out of curiosity,
[>]

They still don't know,
[>]

They think for days on end,
[>]

They were or they weren't,
[>]

This adult male. This person on earth,
[>]

This isn't Miss Duncan, the noted danseuse?,
[>]

This is what I see in my dreams about final exams:,
[>]

This spring the birds came back again too early,
[>]

Thomas Mann,
[>]

“Thou art certain then, our ship hath touch'd upon,
[>]

Thoughts That Visit Me on Busy Streets,
[>]

Titanettes, female fauna,
[>]

To be a boxer, or not to be there,
[>]

“Today he sings this way: tralala tra la,
[>]

To My Friends,
[>]

To My Heart, on Sunday,
[>]

To My Own Poem,
[>]

Tortures,
[>]

Travel Elegy,
[>]

True Love,
[>]

True love. Is it normal,
[>]

Twenty-seven bones,
[>]

 

Under One Small Star,
[>]

Under what conditions do you dream of the dead?,
[>]

Up the verdantest of hills,
[>]

Utopia,
[>]

 

Vermeer,
[>]

Vietnam,
[>]

View with a Grain of Sand,
[>]

Vocabulary,
[>]

Voices,
[>]

 

Wait, you can't go in there,
[>]

Warning,
[>]

Water,
[>]

We are children of our age,
[>]

We call it a grain of sand,
[>]

We eat another life so as to live,
[>]

We have a soul at times,
[>]

Well, my poor man,
[>]

Well versed in the expanses,
[>]

We read the letters of the dead like helpless gods,
[>]

We're Extremely Fortunate,
[>]

We treat each other with exceeding courtesy;,
[>]

We used matches to draw lots: who would visit him.,
[>]

We were chatting,
[>]

What do a smile and,
[>]

What needs to be done?,
[>]

“What time is it?”
“Oh yes, I'm so happy;,
[>]

When I pronounce the word Future,
[>]

When they first started looking through microscopes,
[>]

While Sleeping,
[>]

WHOEVER'S found out what location,
[>]

Why, after all, this one and not the rest?,
[>]

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?,
[>]

Why not, let's take the Foraminifera,
[>]

Without a Title,
[>]

With the help of people and the other elements,
[>]

“Woman, what's your name?” “I don't know.”,
[>]

Write it down. Write it. With ordinary ink,
[>]

Writing a Résumé,
[>]

Written in a Hotel,
[>]

Wrong Number,
[>]

 

Yes, I remember that wall,
[>]

You can't move an inch, my dear Marcus Emilius,
[>]

You expected a hermit to live in the wilderness,
[>]

You're crying here, but there they're dancing,
[>]

You take off, we take off, they take off,
[>]

 

Visit
www.hmhco.com
or your favorite retailer to order
Here
, by Wisława Szymborska.

 

W
ISŁAWA
S
ZYMBORSKA
(1923–2012) was born in Poland and worked as a poetry editor, translator and columnist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996.

 

C
LARE
C
AVANAGH
has received an NBCC award for criticism and a PEN Translation Prize for her work, with S
TANISŁAW
B
ARAŃSCZAK
, on Szymborska's poetry.

* Changed from Shakespeare's “perfect.” (
Translators' note
)

[back]

***

* Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, an enormously gifted poet of the “war generation,” was killed as a Home Army fighter in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 at the age of twenty-three. (
Translators' note
)