POETRY FROM POLAND
TRANSLATED BY STANISLAW BARANCZAK
AND CLARE CAVANAGH
Wistawa Szymborska
OUR ANCESTORS' SHORT LIVES
Few of them made it to thirty.
Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.
Childhood ended as fast as wolf cubs grow.
One had to hurry, to get on with life
before the sun went down,
before the first snow.
Thirteen-year-olds bearing children,
four-year-olds stalking birds' nests in the rushes ,
leading the hunt at twenty-
they aren't yet, then they are gone.
Infinity's ends fused quickly.
Witches chewed charms
with all the teeth of youth intact.
A son grew to manhood beneath his father's eye.
Beneath the grandfather's blank sockets the grandson was born .
And anyway they didn't count the years .
They counted nets, pots, sheds, and axes.
Time, so generous towards any petty star in the sky,
offered them a nearly empty hand
and quickly took it back , as if the effort were too much .
One step more, two steps more
along the glittering river
which sprung from darkness and vanished into darkness .
