The End and The Beginning
By Wislawa Szymborska
Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won't pick
themselves up, after all.
Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded the corpses
can get by.
Someone has to trudge
through the sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.
By Wislawa Szymborska
Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won't pick
themselves up, after all.
Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded the corpses
can get by.
Someone has to trudge
through the sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.
