Two of two.
...and I read Szymborska and weep:
"After every war
someone has to clean up [...]
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull."
And that's how it begins again; fools who have no clue, nor care to pay attention to history, with their sense of ennui.
Last night, after sketching a portrait of a lost love, I sat in a hot bath, one hand on a tub of coffee ice cream and a copy of Poetry 180 in the other, thinking "Blesséd peace."
I don't think many understand when, asking me the throw-away "How's it going?" I answer, "It's a great day: nobody's shooting at me...no one blew up my house..."
They think I'm being flippant.
The ignorant are a danger to peace.
Szymborska, a Pole who cleaned up, after surviving it.
The whole poem:
The End and the Beginning
Wislawa Szymborska
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
We'll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.
From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
"After every war
someone has to clean up [...]
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull."
And that's how it begins again; fools who have no clue, nor care to pay attention to history, with their sense of ennui.
Last night, after sketching a portrait of a lost love, I sat in a hot bath, one hand on a tub of coffee ice cream and a copy of Poetry 180 in the other, thinking "Blesséd peace."
I don't think many understand when, asking me the throw-away "How's it going?" I answer, "It's a great day: nobody's shooting at me...no one blew up my house..."
They think I'm being flippant.
The ignorant are a danger to peace.
Szymborska, a Pole who cleaned up, after surviving it.
The whole poem:
The End and the Beginning
Wislawa Szymborska
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
We'll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.
From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.