CLARE CAVANAGH
253
that, who knows, may not open to see the sun rise?
I am just passing through, it's a five-minute stop.
I won't catch what is distant; what's too close, I'll mix up.
While trying to plumb what the void's inner sense is,
I'm bound to pass by all these poppies and pansies.
What a loss when you think how much effort was spent
perfecting this petal, this pistil, this scent
for the one-time appearance that is all they're allowed,
so aloofly precise and so fragilely proud.
-tr. Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
In the poem, Szymborska sends language scrambling, by way of her
frantic wordplay, rhythm, and rhymes, to keep pace with the relentless
form-creation that animates nature itself. (She also provides, if we
needed one, a perfect defense against the myth that literalness equals
fidelity when translating poetry. What ham-handed translator would
render the poem's fifth and sixth lines as follows: "These thickets and
muzzles and breams and rains, / geraniums and praying mantises, where
will I put them?" The Polish text is clearly calling out for translators
doing their damnedest to channel Gilbert and Sullivan or maybe Ogden
Nash: "All the thickets and crickets and creepers and creeks! / The
beeches and leeches alone could take weeks.")
The second poem I want to quote is Adam Zagajewski's beautiful
"Mysticism for Beginners"
("Mistyka dla poczatkujacych"):
The day was mild, the light was generous.
The German on the cafe terrace
held a small book on his lap.
I caught sight of the title:
Mysticism for Beginners.
Suddenly I understood that the swallows
patrolling the streets of Montepulciano
with their shrill whistles,
and the hushed talk of timid travelers
from Eastern, so-called Centra l Europe,
and the white herons standing-yesterday? the day before?–
like nuns in fields of rice,
and the dusk, slow and systematic,
erasing the outlines of medieval houses,
and olive trees on little hills,
abandoned to the wind and heat,
and the head of the Unknown Princess
that I saw and admired in the Louvre,
