Wisława Szymborska: The End and the Beginning

1. Only a few weeks left until it’s December, but it already feels a lot like January now. Unfamiliarity in the familiar, possibly a new chance, this month.

2. The world is not the same as it was before. Virals are now sought after instead of avoided.

3. For some, the world they know was taken away by nature’s wrath. For others, the world they know ceases to be comforting.

4. The ground by which I find secure footing is shaking up and down sideways. Something is up. And there’s a possibility that it could be a good one. 

The End and the Beginning
Wisława Szymborska

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’tstraighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

Again we’ll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.

From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass which has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out,
blade of grass in his mouth,
gazing at the clouds.