Map by Wisława Szymborska Page A

kaleidoscope in its hands.
A billion bits of colored glass glitter.
And suddenly Jack’s glass
bumps into Jill’s.
Just imagine, in this very same hotel.
I turn around and see—
it’s really she!
Face to face in an elevator.
In a toy store.
At the corner of Maple and Pine.
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Happenstance is shrouded in a cloak.
Things get lost in it and then are found again.
I stumbled on it accidentally.
I bent down and picked it up.
One look and I knew it,
a spoon from that stolen service.
If it hadn’t been for that bracelet,
I would never have known Alexandra.
The clock? It turned up in Potterville.
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Happenstance looks deep into our eyes.
Our head grows heavy.
Our eyelids drop.
We want to laugh and cry,
it’s so incredible.
From fourth-grade homeroom to that ocean liner.
It has to mean something.
To hell and back,
and here we meet halfway home.
We want to shout:
Small world!
You could almost hug it!
And for a moment we are filled with joy,
radiant and deceptive.

Love at First Sight
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They’re both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
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Since they’d never met before, they’re sure
that there’d been nothing between them.
But what’s the word from the streets, staircases, hallways—
perhaps they’ve passed by each other a million times?
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I want to ask them
if they don’t remember—
a moment face to face
in some revolving door?
perhaps a “sorry” muttered in a crowd?
a curt “wrong number” caught in the receiver?—
but I know the answer.
No, they don’t remember.
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They’d be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.
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Not quite ready yet
to become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.
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There were signs and signals,
even if they couldn’t read them yet.
Perhaps three years ago
or just last Tuesday
a certain leaf fluttered
from one shoulder to another?
Something was dropped and then picked up.
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished
into childhood’s thicket?
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There were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.
Suitcases checked and standing side by side.
One night, perhaps, the same dream,
grown hazy by morning.
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Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.

May 16, 1973
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One of those many dates
that no longer ring a bell.
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Where I was going that day,
what I was doing—I don’t know.
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Whom I met, what we talked about,
I can’t recall.
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If a crime had been committed nearby,
I wouldn’t have had an alibi.
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The sun flared and died
beyond my horizons.
The earth rotated
unnoted in my notebooks.
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I’d rather think
that I’d temporarily died
than that I kept on living
and can’t remember a thing.
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I wasn’t a ghost, after all.
I breathed, I ate,
I walked.
My steps were audible,
my fingers surely left
their prints on doorknobs.
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Mirrors caught my reflection.
I wore something or other in such-and-such a color.
Somebody must have seen me.
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Maybe I found something that day
that had been lost.
Maybe I lost something that turned up later.
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I was filled with feelings and sensations.
Now all that’s like
a line of dots in parentheses.
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Where was I hiding out,
where did I bury myself?
Not a bad trick
to vanish before my own eyes.
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I shake my memory.
Maybe something in its branches
that has been asleep for years
will start up with a flutter.
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No.
Clearly I’m asking too much.
Nothing less than one whole second.

Maybe All This
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Maybe all this
is happening in some lab?
Under one lamp by day
and billions by night?
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Maybe we’re experimental generations?
Poured from one vial to the next,
shaken in test tubes,
not