Map by Wisława Szymborska Page B

scrutinized by eyes alone,
each of us separately
plucked up by tweezers in the end?
    Â 
Or maybe it’s more like this:
No interference?
The changes occur on their own
according to plan?
The graph’s needle slowly etches
its predictable zigzags?
    Â 
Maybe thus far we aren’t of much interest?
The control monitors aren’t usually plugged in?
Only for wars, preferably large ones,
for the odd ascent above our clump of Earth,
for major migrations from point A to B?
    Â 
Maybe just the opposite:
They’ve got a taste for trivia up there?
Look! on the big screen a little girl
is sewing a button on her sleeve.
The radar shrieks,
the staff comes at a run.
What a darling little being
with its tiny heart beating inside it!
How sweet, its solemn
threading of the needle!
Someone cries enraptured:
Get the Boss,
tell him he’s got to see this for himself!

Slapstick
    Â 
    Â 
If there are angels,
I doubt they read
our novels
concerning thwarted hopes.
    Â 
I’m afraid, alas,
they never touch the poems
that bear our grudges against the world.
    Â 
The rantings and railings
of our plays
must drive them, I suspect,
to distraction.
    Â 
Off duty, between angelic—
i.e., inhuman—occupations,
they watch instead
our slapstick
from the age of silent film.
    Â 
To our dirge wailers,
garment renders,
and teeth gnashers,
they prefer, I suppose,
that poor devil
who grabs the drowning man by his toupee
or, starving, devours his own shoelaces
with gusto.
    Â 
From the waist up, starch and aspirations;
below, a startled mouse
runs down his trousers.
I’m sure
that’s what they call real entertainment.
    Â 
A crazy chase in circles
ends up pursuing the pursuer.
The light at the end of the tunnel
turns out to be a tiger’s eye.
A hundred disasters
mean a hundred comic somersaults
turned over a hundred abysses.
    Â 
If there are angels,
they must, I hope,
find this convincing,
this merriment dangling from terror,
not even crying Save me Save me
since all of this takes place in silence.
    Â 
I can even imagine
that they clap their wings
and tears run from their eyes
from laughter, if nothing else.

Nothing’s a Gift
    Â 
    Â 
Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
I’m drowning in debts up to my ears.
I’ll have to pay for myself
with my self,
give up my life for my life.
    Â 
Here’s how it’s arranged:
The heart can be repossessed,
the liver, too,
and each single finger and toe.
    Â 
Too late to tear up the terms,
my debts will be repaid,
and I’ll be fleeced,
or, more precisely, flayed.
    Â 
I move about the planet
in a crush of other debtors.
Some are saddled with the burden
of paying off their wings.
Others must, willy-nilly,
account for every leaf.
    Â 
Every tissue in us lies
on the debit side.
Not a tentacle or tendril
is for keeps.
    Â 
The inventory, infinitely detailed,
implies we’ll be left
not just empty-handed
but handless, too.
    Â 
I can’t remember
where, when, and why
I let someone open
this account in my name.
    Â 
We call the protest against this
the soul.
And it’s the only item
not included on the list.

One Version of Events
    Â 
    Â 
If we’d been allowed to choose,
we’d probably have gone on forever.
    Â 
The bodies that were offered didn’t fit,
and wore out horribly.
    Â 
The ways of sating hunger
made us sick.
We were repelled
by blind heredity
and the tyranny of glands.
    Â 
The world that was meant to embrace us
decayed without end
and the effects of causes raged over it.
    Â 
Individual fates
were presented for our inspection:
appalled and grieved,
we rejected most of them.
    Â 
Questions naturally arose, e.g.,
who needs the painful birth
of a dead child,
and what’s in it for a sailor
who will never reach the shore.
    Â 
We agreed to death,
but not to every kind.
Love attracted us,
of course, but only love
that keeps its word.
    Â 
Both fickle standards
and the impermanence of