Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak

A Photograph of a Crowd

Wisława Szymborska
translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak

In a photograph of a crowd
my head seventh from the edge,
or maybe four in from the left
or twenty up from the bottom;

my head, I can’t tell which,
no more the one and only, but already one of many,
and resembling the resembling,
neither clearly male nor female;

the marks it flashes at me
are not distinguishing marks;

maybe The Spirit of Time sees it,
but he’s not looking at it closely;

my demographic head
which consumes steel and cables
so easily, so globally,

unashamed it’s nothing special,
undespairing it’s replaceable;

as if it weren’t mine
in its own way on its own;

as if a cemetery were
dug up, full of nameless skulls
of high preservability
despite their mortality;

as if it were already there,
my any head, someone else’s—

where its recollections, if any,
would stretch deep into the future.

A Paleolithic Fertility Fetish

The Great Mother has no face

Why would the Great Mother need a face.

The face cannot stay faithful to the body,

the face disturbs the body, it is undivine,

it disturbs the body’s solemn unity.

The Great Mother’s visage is her bulging belly
With its blind navel in the middle.

The Great Mother has no feet.
What would the Great Mother do with feet
Where is she going to go.
Why would she go into the world’s details.

She has gone just as far as she wants

and keeps watch in the workshops under her taut skin.

So there's a world out there? Well and good.
It's bountiful? Even better.
The children have somewhere to go, to run around,
something to look up to? Wonderful.
So much that it's still there while they're sleeping,
almost ridiculously whole and real?
It keeps on existing when their backs are turned?
That's just too much--it shouldn't have.

The Great Mother barely has a pair of arms,

two tiny limbs lie lazing on her breass.

Why would they want to bless life,

give gifts to what has enough and more!

Their only obligation is to endure as long as earth and sky just in case

of some mishap that never comes.

To form a zigzag over essence.

The ornament’s last laugh.