Wislawa Szymborska, “Travel Elegy”
from Poems New and Collected
Everything’s mine though just on loan,
nothing for the memory to hold,
though mine as long as I look.
Memories come to mind like excavated statues
that have misplaced their heads.
From the town of Samokov, only rain
and more rain.
Paris from Louvre to fingernail
grows web-eyed by the moment.
Boulevard Saint-Martin some stairs
leading into a fadeout.
Only a bridge and a half
from Leningrad of the bridges.
Poor Uppsala, reduced to a splinter
of its mighty cathedral.
Sofia’s hapless dancer,
a form without a face.
Then separately, his face without eyes;
separately again, his eyes with no pupils,
and, finally, the pupils of a cat.
A Caucasian eagle soars
over the reproduction of a canyon,
the fool’s gold of the sun,
the phony stones.
Everything’s mine but just on loan,
nothing for the memory to hold,
though mine as long as I look.
Inexhaustible, unembracable,
but particular to the smallest fiber,
grain of sand, drop of water—
landscapes.
I won’t retain one blade of grass
as it’s truly seen.
Salutation and farewell
in a single glance.
For surplus and absence alike,
a single motion of the neck.