The End and the Beginning
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
We’ll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.
From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
Notes
Where Mary Oliver surrendered mortal forms to the autumn fires of Blackwater Woods, learning the quiet discipline of letting go, Wisława Szymborska turns her gaze toward the unglamorous aftermath of catastrophe, where someone must inevitably push the broom, haul the rubble, and prop the doors back onto their hinges. The speaking subject dismantles the theatrical monumentality of historical trauma, demonstrating how ideological storms and violent ruptures are slowly absorbed into the repetitive, silent labor of rebuilding, until the origins of the wound fade into overgrown grass where future witnesses lie forgetting how it began. It roots September’s theme of Echo in the amnesiac cadence of historical renewal, reminding us that repetition is also the quiet erasure that follows survival—the persistent, everyday effort that clears away the wreckage so the world can blindly rehearse living once again. #September #WislawaSzymborska #Echo #Time #Life
Wislawa Szymborska, "The End and the Beginning" from Miracle Fair, translated by Joanna Trzeciak. Copyright © 2001 by Joanna Trzeciak.