Wisława Szymborska, 1923-2012

On the second day of February this year, the world lost a beautiful voice. View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems (1995) was the book that brought me to her doorstep, and there I stayed. In fact, just the week prior to her passing I had finally received from Amazon nonrequired reading (2002) which I had been hankering after for ages. I feel sad looking at it now and haven’t had the heart to crack it open yet. In the meanwhile, I’d like to share one of my favourite poems from her 1995 colection – I hope it gives you as much pleasure as it did me.

it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Tea – by Carol Ann Duffy

Ode to Bicycles

 

I was walking
down
a sizzling road:
the sun popped like
a field of blazing maize,
the
earth
was hot,
an infinite circle
with an empty
blue sky overhead.

A few bicycles
passed
me by,
the only
insects
in
that dry
moment of summer,
silent,
swift,
translucent;
they
barely stirred
the air.

Workers and girls
were riding to their
factories,
giving
their eyes
to summer,
their heads to the sky,
sitting on the
hard
beetle backs
of the whirling
bicycles
that whirred
as they rode by
bridges, rosebushes, brambles
and midday.

I thought about evening when
the boys
wash up,
sing, eat, raise
a cup
of wine
in honor
of love
and life,
and waiting
at the door,
the bicycle,
stilled,
because
only moving
does it have a soul,
and fallen there
it isn’t
a translucent insect
humming
through summer
but
a cold
skeleton
that will return to
life
only
when it’s needed,
when it’s light,
that is,
with
the
resurrection
of each day.

Pablo Neruda

Summer Approaches