€ΧΉΰΓΧΝΉ | Ί··ΥθαΕιΗ | Szymborska | Ί·΅θΝδ»
Give me a kisse, and to that kisse a score;
Then to that twenty, adde a hundred more;
A thousand to that hundred; so kiss on,
To make that thousand up a million;
Treble that million, and when that is done
Let's kisse afresh, as when we first begun.

Robt. Herrick


M U S E U M
 

Here are plates but no appetite.
And wedding rings, but the requited love
has been gone now for some three hundred years.

Here's a fan ---where is the maiden's blush?
Here are swords---where is the ire?
Nor will the lute sound at the twilight hour.

Since eternity was out of stock,
ten thousand aging things have been amassed instead.
The moss-grown guard in golden slumber
props his mustache on Exhibit Number ...

Eight. Metals, clay and feathers celebrate
their silent triumphs over dates.
Only some Egyptian flapper's silly hairpin giggles.

The crown has outlasted the head.
The hand has lost out to the glove.
The right shoe has defeated the foot.

As for me, I am still alive, you see.
The battle with my dress still rages on.
It struggles, foolish thing, so stubbornly!
Determined to keep living when I'm gone!
 

Wislawa Szymborska

€ΧΉΰΓΧΝΉ | Ί··ΥθαΕιΗ | Szymborska | Ί·΅θΝδ»

 
Above the bed hung many small pictures and slips of paper. There were questions, poems, little article, even recipes that Hanna had written down or cut out like pictures from newspapers and magazines. A newspaper photograph showed an older man and a younger man, both in dark suits, shaking hands. I recognized myself.