This week’s Poem Pick comes from Wislawa Szymborska. She is a Polish poet, essayist and translator. She is the 1996 laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature. In Poland, her books reach sales rivaling prominent novelists although she once remarked in a poem entitled "Some like poetry" that no more than two out of a thousand people care for the art. I'm thinking, Dear Reader, that would be you and me.
There But for the Grace
It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened sooner. Later.
Nearer. Farther.
It happened not to you.
You survived because you were the first.
You survived because you were the last.
Because you were alone. Because of people.
Because you turned left. Because you turned right.
Because rain fell. Because a shadow fell.
Because sunny weather prevailed.
Luckily, there was a wood.
Luckily there were no trees.
Luckily there was a rail, a hook, a beam, a brake,
a frame, a bend, a millimeter, a second.
Luckily a straw was floating on the surface.
Thanks to, because, and yet, in spite of.
What would have happened had not a hand, a foot,
by a step, a hairsbreadth
by sheer coincidence.
So you’re here? Straight from a moment still ajar?
The net had one eyehole, and you got through it?
There’s no end to my wonder, my silence.
Listen
how fast your heart beats in me.
Wislawa Szymborska, from her collection Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems