POETRY

May 16, 1973
by Wislawa Szymborska - c.1993

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