NO TITLE REQUIRED It has come to this: Im sitting under a tree beside a river on a sunny morning. Its an insignificant event and wont go down in history. Its not battles and pacts, where motives are scrutinized, or noteworthy tyrannicides. And yet Im sitting by this river, thats a fact. And since Im here I must have come from somewhere, and before that I must have turned up in many other places, exactly like the conquerors of nations before setting sail. Even a passing moment has its fertile past, its Friday before Saturday, its May before June. Its horizons are no less real than those that a marshals field glasses might scan. This tree is a poplar thats been rooted here for years. The river is the Raba; it didnt spring up yesterday. The path leading through the bushes wasnt beaten last week. The wind had to blow the clouds here before it could blow them away. And though nothing much is going on nearby, the world is no poorer in details for that. Its just as grounded, just as definite as when migrating races held it captive. Conspiracies arent the only things shrouded in silence. Retinues of reasons dont trail coronations alone. Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around, but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay. The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense. Ants stitching in the grass. The grass sewn into the ground. The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig. So it happens that I am and look. Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air on wings that are its alone, and a shadow skims through my hands that is none other than itself, no one elses but its own. When I see such things, Im no longer sure that whats important is more important than whats not. ~ Wislawa Szymborska ~ (Poems New and Collected 1957-1997, trans. S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh)
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 11:38:31 +0000