Map by Wisława Szymborska

the far shore
(if they found themselves at all
and if another shore exists)—
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I’ve been given no assurance
as concerns their future fate
(if there is one common fate
and if it is still fate)—
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It’s all
(if that word’s not too confining)
behind them now
(if not before them)—
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How many of them leaped from rushing time
and vanished, ever more mournfully, in the distance
(if you put stock in perspective)—
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How many
(if the question makes sense,
if one can verify a final sum
without including oneself)
have sunk into that deepest sleep
(if there’s nothing deeper)—
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See you soon.
See you tomorrow.
See you next time.
They don’t want
(if they don’t want) to say that anymore.
They’ve given themselves up to endless
(if not otherwise) silence.
They’re only concerned with that
(if only that)
which their absence demands.

Cat in an Empty Apartment
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Die—you can’t do that to a cat.
Since what can a cat do
in an empty apartment?
Climb the walls?
Rub up against the furniture?
Nothing seems different here,
but nothing is the same.
Nothing has been moved,
but there’s more space.
And at nighttime no lamps are lit.
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Footsteps on the staircase,
but they’re new ones.
The hand that puts fish on the saucer
has changed, too.
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Something doesn’t start
at its usual time.
Something doesn’t happen
as it should.
Someone was always, always here,
then suddenly disappeared
and stubbornly stays disappeared.
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Every closet has been examined.
Every shelf has been explored.
Excavations under the carpet turned up nothing.
A commandment was even broken:
papers scattered everywhere.
What remains to be done.
Just sleep and wait.
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Just wait till he turns up,
just let him show his face.
Will he ever get a lesson
on what not to do to a cat.
Sidle toward him
as if unwilling
and ever so slow
on visibly offended paws,
and no leaps or squeals at least to start.

Parting with a View
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I don’t reproach the spring
for starting up again.
I can’t blame it
for doing what it must
year after year.
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I know that my grief
will not stop the green.
The grass blade may bend
but only in the wind.
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It doesn’t pain me to see
that clumps of alders above the water
have something to rustle with again.
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I take note of the fact
that the shore of a certain lake
is still—as if you were living—
as lovely as before.
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I don’t resent
the view for its vista
of a sun-dazzled bay.
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I am even able to imagine
some non-us
sitting at this minute
on a fallen birch trunk.
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I respect their right
to whisper, laugh,
and lapse into happy silence.
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I can even allow
that they are bound by love
and that he holds her
with a living arm.
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Something freshly birdish
starts rustling in the reeds.
I sincerely want them
to hear it.
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I don’t require changes
from the surf,
now diligent, now sluggish,
obeying not me.
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I expect nothing
from the depths near the woods,
first emerald,
then sapphire,
then black.
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There’s one thing I won’t agree to:
my own return.
The privilege of presence—
I give it up.
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I survived you by enough,
and only by enough,
to contemplate from afar.

Séance
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    Â 
Happenstance reveals its tricks.
It produces, by sleight of hand, a glass of brandy
and sits Henry down beside it.
I enter the bistro and stop dead in my tracks.
Henry—he’s none other than
Agnes’s husband’s brother,
and Agnes is related
to Aunt Sophie’s brother-in-law.
It turns out
we’ve got the same great-grandfather.
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In happenstance’s hands
space furls and unfurls,
spreads and shrinks.
The tablecloth
becomes a handkerchief.
Just guess who I ran into
in Canada, of all places,
after all these years.
I thought he was dead,
and there he was, in a Mercedes.
On the plane to Athens.
At a stadium in Tokyo.
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Happenstance twirls a