Friday, April 07, 2006

Healing and cleaning

One hopes the former refers to my wounded leg, and the latter refers to getting my mother to take her bath, and then go to the hair salon. I made the terrible error of glancing at a story about an area man who died, very rapidly, from the ravages of a flesh-eating virus. I thought I was immune to that kind of irrational fear, but it's eating at me, not a virus.
While looking for more peotry to cite, I found this in a collection by another female Polish poet, Wistawa Szymborska. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. The book's title is "view with a grain of sand". The poem is called:

NOTHING'S A GIFT
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.

Here's how it's arranged:
The heart can be repossessed,
the liver, too,
and each single finger and toe.

Too late to tear up the terms,
my debts will be repaid,
and I'll be fleeced,
or, more precisely, flayed.

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.

Every tissue in us lies
on the debit side.
Not a tentacle or tendril
is for keeps.

The inventory, infinitely detailed,
implies we'll be left
not just empty-handed
but handless, too.

I can't remember
where, when, and why
I let someone open
this account in my name.

We call the protest against this
the soul.
And it's the only item
not included on the list.

Mostly I like this one, although I'm not quite sure I know what she's driving at about regarding the so-called soul. I suppose she's indicating that each of us has it free of charge. A bit too religious-y for me, but I don't get the sense from reading her other poems that she's terribly religious.

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