A FEW WORDS ON THE SOUL
Wisława Szymborska
Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare CavanaghWe have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.
Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.
Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.
It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.
It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.
For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.
Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.
It’s picky:
it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.
Joy and sorrow
aren’t two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.
We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.
Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.
It won’t say where it comes from
or when it’s taking off again,
though it’s clearly expecting such questions.
We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.
Our Soul’s and everything that’s sacredly in them always need to be free and untethered not so much that they can fly about willy-nilly but to continue to create what seems to be timelessly re-created in them;
SOUL SEEPINGS
Of course there’s testing to be done samples to be taken cross matches to be completed intentions to be discussed therapies to be administered advanced medical knowledge to be applied scientific discoveries to be utilized None of it All of it necessary or unnecessary to these Soul Seepings that come from places not yet dreamed never to be understood but known like a familiar place that needs no lighting for steps that know the way in the dark all so intimately known and at best shared Whatever seeps from the Soul outshines any rays of light refusing to be hidden. . .
but if you don’t look
but if you don’t see
it doesn’t much matter. . .
Whatever seeps from the Soul outshines any rays of light refusing to be hidden. . .