Friday Poetry Blogging

In honor of Zack, my former paramour from San Francisco, who loves poetry as much as I do. He shared this piece with me a couple of years ago, and I fell in love with it. Wislawa Szymborska was born in 1923 in Kornik, Poland. She writes with compassion and affinity for the human condition, bringing an intelligent perspective to the most pressing issues of the 20th century, focusing on the moral, ethical, and philosophical aspects of life.

The Silence of Plants

by Wisława Szymborska

A one-sided relationship is developing quite well between you and me.

I know what a leaf, petal, kernel, cone, and stem are,

and I know what happens to you in April and December.
Though my curiosity is unrequited,

I gladly stoop for some of you,

and for others I crane my neck.
I have names for you:

maple, burdock, liverwort,

heather, juniper, mistletoe, and forget-me-not;

but you have none for me.
After all, we share a common journey.

When traveling together, it's normal to talk,

exchanging remarks, say, about the weather,

or about the stations flashing past.
We wouldn't run out of topics for so much connects us.

The same star keeps us in reach.

We cast shadows according to the same laws.

Both of us at least try to know something, each in our own way,

and even in what we don't know there lies a resemblance.
Just ask and I will explain as best I can:

what it is to see through my eyes,

why my heart beats,

and how come my body is unrooted.
But how does someone answer questions which have never been posed,

and when, on top of that

the one who would answer is such an utter nobody to you?
Undergrowth, shrubbery, meadows, and rushes…

everything I say to you is a monologue,

and it is not you who's listening.
A conversation with you is necessary and impossible,

urgent in a hurried life

and postponed for never.