wislawa szymborska died today. her words always meant so much to me - they helped to sew shut wounds when i couldn't see enough to thread the needle, they helped to locate heat when the windows were sealed with ice, they echoed across continents merely for the joy in the beauty of words.
i can't feel anything but gratitude that i felt/feel the impact of the blow. it doesn't have to be an explosion... sometimes a slow burn is enough (it's more than enough) to draw out the memory. these memories carry us through, don't they?
A LITTLE ON THE SOUL - W. SZYMBORSKA
Periodically one has a soul.
Nobody has it all the time and forever.
Day after day, year after year
can pass without it.
Sometimes only in rapture
and in fears of childhood
it dwells within longer.
Sometimes only in the astonishment,
that we have become old.
It rarely assists us
in strenuous pursuits,
such as moving furniture,
carrying suitcases
or tromping through a road in tight shoes.
While filling in forms
and chopping meat
it usually takes the day off.
In a thousand of our conversations
it participates in one,
and not even necessarily in one,
preferring silence.
When our bodies start aching more and more,
it silently leaves the ward.
It's fussy:
it doesn't see us immediately in a crowd,
it sickens at our attempts at mere advantage
and the shrill clamor of business.
Joy and sorrow
are not all that different to it.
Only in the combination of them
does it stand up.
We can rely on it,
when we are certain of nothing,
and when everything seizes us.
Among all material objects
it likes best clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which work fervently,
Even when nobody looks.
It doesn't say where it comes from
and when it will disappear next,
But it clearly awaits such questions.
It looks like,
as much as we need it,
also it
needs us for something too.
Translated from the Polish by Rick Hilles and Maja Jablonska
maybe it's for my father, or for jay, or my grandparents, for leanna or tom, and heather, or perhaps just for the moment in time we are all stuck in the ether - fixed - waving goodbye. though through the veil, it looks much like hello.
so, for the thousands of goodbyes and lost tokens, for the hundreds of broken hearts and aching spirits, for your unrequited confessions and risks unrewarded, for the lack of change to place in hunger's palm, for the words that don't do justice for the sunset or the thick silence of sleep... i'll tick each goodbye as a mark on the wall, with the promise of reunion to pay in kind.
until we meet again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmQuIsDnQ3k
(you are still next to me, alright.)
Love it & you!
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