Map: Collected and Last Poems - Tapa blanda

Praise for Wislawa Szymborksa:
 
“Extremely smart, witty, and level-headed, [Szymborska] seduces us with her wide range of interests, her atypical lack of narcissism for a poet, and her cheerful pessimism.” — New York Review of Books

“Her poems offer a restorative wit as playful as it is steely and as humble as it is wise. Most poets jostle for center stage, but Szymborska looks on from afar, her wry acceptance of life’s folly remaining her strongest weapon against tyranny and bad taste.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Refreshingly direct but always surprising, her poems keep taking us to further, unexpected perspectives.” — O, the Oprah Magazine
“Dark, complex, and profoundly intelligent.” — Washington Post
 
“[She] captures the nightmarish contingency of human survival, and the human callousness toward nature, with an ironic elegance miraculously free of bitterness.” — The New Yorker

The Questions You Ask Yourself
 
What do a smile and
handshake hold?
Do your greetings never
keep you as far
apart as other people
sometimes are
when passing judgment
at first glance?
Do you open each human
fate like a book,
seeking feelings
not in fonts
or formats?
Are you sure you
decipher people completely?
You gave an evasive
word in answering,
a bright joke in place of openness — 
how do you tally your losses?
Stunted friendships,
frozen worlds.
Do you know that friendship,
like love, requires teamwork?
Someone missed a step
in this demanding effort.
In your friends’ errors
do you bear no blame?
Someone complained, advised.
How many tears ran dry
before you lent a hand?
Jointly responsible
for the happiness of millennia,
don’t you slight
the single minute
of a tear, a wince?
Do you never overlook
another’s effort?
A glass stood on the table,
no one noticed
until it fell,
toppled by a thoughtless gesture.
 
Are people really so simple
as far as people go?



Hania
 
Now see, here’s Hania, the good servant.
And those aren’t frying pans, you know, they’re halos.
And that’s a holy image, knight and serpent.
The serpent means vanity in this vale of woes.
 
And that’s no necklace, that’s her rosary.
Her shoes have toes turned up from daily kneeling.
Scarf dark as all the nights she sits up, weary,
and waits to hear the morning church bells pealing.
 
Scrubbing the mirror once, she saw a devil:
Bless me, Father, he shot a nasty look.
Blue with yellow stripes, eyes black as kettles — 
you don’t think he’ll write me in his book?
 
And so she gives at Mass, she prays the mysteries,
and buys a small heart with a silver flame.
Since work began on the new rectory,
the devils have all run away in shame.
 
The cost is high, preserving souls from sin,
but only old folks come here, scraping by.
With so much of nothing, razor-thin,
Hania would vanish in the Needle’s Eye.
 
May, renounce your hues for wintery gray.
Leafy bough, throw off your greenery.
Clouds, repent; sun, cast your beams away.
Spring, save your blooms for heaven’s scenery.
 
I never heard her laughter or her tears.
Raised humble, she owns nothing but her skin.
A shadow walks beside her — her mortal fears,
her tattered kerchief yammers in the wind.



Still Life with a Balloon
 
Returning memories?
No, at the time of death
I’d like to see lost objects
return instead.
 
Avalanches of gloves,
coats, suitcases, umbrellas — 
come, and I’ll say at last:
What good’s all this?
 
Safety pins, two odd combs,
a paper rose, a knife,
some string — come, and I’ll say
at last: I haven’t missed you.
 
Please turn up, key, come out,
wherever you’ve been hiding,
in time for me to say:
You’ve gotten rusty, friend!
 
Downpours of affidavits,
permits and questionnaires,
rain down and I will say:
I see the sun behind you.
 
My watch, dropped in a river,
bob up and let me seize you — 
then, face to face, I’ll say:
Your so-called time is up.
 
And lastly, toy balloon
once kidnapped by the wind — 
come home, and I will say:
There are no children here.
 
Fly out the open window
and into the wide world;
let someone else shout “Look!”
and I will cry.