Wislawa Szymborska, 1923-2012

I had never heard of Ms. Szymborska before I read a tribute by Katha Pollitt in the March 5 issue of The Nation. Ms. Szymborska lived through Hitler’s occupation of Poland and another 40 years of Russian rule.  She won a Nobel Prize in 1996 for her poetry.  

Pollitt quotes from four of her poems.  Here is a portion of “The End and the Beginning.”

After every war

someone has to tidy up.

Things won’t pick 

themselves up, after all.

Someone has to shove

the rubble to the roadsides

so the carts loaded with corpses 

can get by.

Here’s a link to another, called “Could Have.”  <http://www.english.upenn.edu/~traister/szymborska.html>.

Emily Dickinson said that good poetry “takes the top of your head off.”  These do.