Nothing Twice

Exactly two months ago today, a friend and colleague of mine made one of my wishes come true.

I had been pining for Wislawa Szymborska’s poetry for a long time now when this friend announced his trip to Poland with his Polish girlfriend. I jumped at the opportunity and requested him to obtain an anthology of Wislawa Szymborska – with dire consequences to his life upon his return, should he fail to fulfill this request.

Of course, he had no idea who Wislawa Szymborska was. So, he couldn’t see the meaning in my threat, until his girlfriend enlightened him on Polish literature – and my sincerity. After all, Wislawa Szymborska is something of a Polish national treasure, apart from being a humanist and a renowned writer.

Happily for me, on 25 July 2008, this colleague and friend of mine handed over a brand new hardcover copy of Nothing Twice (Selected Poems) – an anthology of 120 Wislawa Szymborska’s poems, both in Polish and in English (translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh), published soon after she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.

This means, although Wislawa Szymborska has written only 250 or so poems so far in her life, not only are they magnificent enough to lead her to her Nobel Prize, but also most of them are contained in this collection. For all those interested, here’s the poem from the title of the anthology:

Nothing Twice

Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,
if you're the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with precisely the same kisses.

One day, perhaps some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to say
Today is always gone tomorrow

With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.

[Nothing Twice, a poem by Wislawa Szymborska, translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh - from the anthology Nothing Twice (Selected Poems) by Wislawa Szymborska, published by Wydawnictwo Literackie, Poland, 1997.]

I thought today would be a good day to post something on Wislawa Szymborska as this friend and colleague of mine is leaving today to join another agency.