Identification -- WisŁawa Szymborska

Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak
[1923–2012, Polish]

It’s good you came – she says.
You heard a plane crashed on Thursday?
Well so they came to see me
about it.
The story is he was on the passenger list.
So what, he might have changed his mind.
They gave me some pills so I wouldn’t fall apart.
Then they showed me I don’t know who.
All black, burned except one hand.
A scrap of shirt, a watch, a wedding ring.
I got furious, that can’t be him.
He wouldn’t do that to me, look like that.
The stores are bursting with those shirts.
The watch is just a regular old watch.
And our names on that ring,
they’re only the most ordinary names.
It’s good you came. Sit here beside me.
He really was supposed to get back Thursday.
But we’ve got so many Thursdays left this year.
I’ll put the kettle on for tea.
I’ll wash my hair, then what,
try to wake up from all this.
It’s good you came, since it was cold there,
and him just in some rubber sleeping bag,
him, I mean, you know, that unlucky man.
I’ll put the Thursday on, wash the tea,
since our names are completely ordinary –

Source: Szymborska, W, 2010, Poetry Magazine (September 2010), www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/239944

Left to Itself the Heart Could Almost Melt, Mend -- Jill Osier

[American]

When the Amish girl gets off the bus
she walks over and stomps
her small black boot into a drift
in front of McDonald’s.
She is maybe new to winter
this far north and wants to know
its depth. Its give. Oh,
be careful. It already has you
by the night of your dress,
violet-black with white-dotted print.

Source: Osier, J 2008, Poetry Magazine (October 2008), www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/182263