Winner of the Heldt Prize for Translation. A new translation of the Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet, with an introduction by Czeslaw Milosz. This long-awaited volume samples the full range of Wislawa Szymborska's major themes: the ironies of love, the wonders of nature's beauty, and the illusory character of art. Szymborska's voice emerges as that of a gentle subversive, self-deprecating in its wit, yet graced with a gift for coaxing the extraordinary out of the ordinary.

Chapter One

    Commemoration

They made love among hazel shrubs

beneath suns of dew,

gathering in their hair

the forest's residue.

Heart of the swallow

have mercy on them.

They knelt down by the lake,

combed out the earth and leaves,

and fish swam to the water's edge,

a shimmering galaxy.

Heart of the swallow

have mercy on them.

Steam rose from trees reflected

in the rippling waves.

O swallow let this memory

forever be engraved.

O swallow, thorn of clouds,

anchor of the air,

Icarus improved,

Assumption in formal wear,

O swallow, the calligrapher,

timeless second hand,

early ornithogothic,

a crossed eye in the sky,

O swallow, pointed silence,

mourning full of joy,

halo over lovers,

have mercy on them.

    Opennes

Here we are, naked lovers,

beautiful to each other--and that's enough--

the leaves of our eyelids our only covers,

we're lying amidst deep night.

But they know about us, they know,

the four corners, and the stove nearby us.

Clever shadows also know

the table knows, but keeps quiet.

Our teacups know full well

why the tea is getting cold.

And old Swift can surely tell

that his book's been put on hold.

Even the birds are in the know:

I saw them writing in the sky

brazenly and openly

the very name I call you by.

The trees? Could you explain to me

their unrelenting whispering?

The wind may know, you say to me,

but how, is just a mystery.

A moth surprised us through the blinds,

its wings a fuzzy flutter.

Its silent path--see how it winds

in a stubborn holding pattern.

Maybe it sees where our eyes fail

with an insect's inborn sharpness.

I never sensed, nor could you tell

that our hearts were aglow in the darkness.

    Drinking Wine

He looked at me, bestowing beauty,

and I took it for my own.

Happy, I swallowed a star.

I let him invent me

in the image of the reflection

in his eyes. I dance, I dance

in an abundance of sudden wings.

A table is a table, wine is wine

in a wineglass, which is a wineglass

and it stands standing on a table

but I am a phantasm,

a phantasm beyond belief,

a phantasm to the core.

I tell him what he wants to hear--about ants

dying of love

under a dandelion's constellation.

I swear that sprinkled with wine

a white rose will sing.

I laugh, and tilt my head

carefully, as if I were testing

an invention. I dance, I dance

in astounded skin, in the embrace

that creates me.

Eve from a rib, Venus from sea foam,

Minerva from the head of Jove

were much more real.

When he's not looking at me,

I search for my reflection

on the wall. All I see

is a nail on which a painting hung.

    I am too close for him ...

I am too close for him to dream about me.

I'm not flying over him, not fleeing him

under the roots of trees. I am too close.

Not with my voice sings the fish in the net.

Not from my finger rolls the ring.

I am too close. A large house is on fire

without my calling for help. Too close

for a bell dangling from my hair to chime.

Too close for me to enter as a guest

before whom the walls part.

Never again will I die so readily,

so far beyond the flesh, so inadvertently

as once in his dream. I am too close,

too close--I hear the hiss

and see the glittering husk of that word,

as I lie immobilized in his embrace. He sleeps,

more available at this moment

to the ticket lady of a one-lion traveling circus

seen but once in his life

than to me lying beside him.

Now a valley grows for her in him, ochre-leaved,

closed off by a snowy mountain

in the azure air. I am too close

to fall out of the sky for him. My scream

might only awaken him. Poor me,

limited to my own form,

but I was a birch tree, I was a lizard,

I emerged from satins and sundials

my skins shimmering in different colors. I possessed

the grace to disappear from astonished eyes,

and that is the rich man's riches. I am too close,

too close for him to dream about me.

I slip my arm out from under his sleeping head.

It's numb, full of imaginary pins and needles.

And on the head of each, ready to be counted,

dance the fallen angels.

Copyright © 2001 Wislawa Szymborska.