Torture

translated, from the Polish, through Joanna Trzeciak

Nothing has changed.

The material part is painful,

it must eat, breathe air and nap

it has thin skin, with life-blood right beneath,

it has a comely supply of teeth and nails

its bone are brittle, its joints extensible.

In torture, all this is taken into account.

Nothing has changed.

The material part trembles, as it trembled

before and after the founding of Rome

in the twentieth hundred before and after Christ. Torture is, as it's always been, sole the earth has shrunk, and whatever happens, have feelings like it happens next door. Nothing has changed. alone there are more people,

next to elderly transgressions, new ones have appeared

real, alleged, momentary, none,

but the scream, the body's replication to them-- was, is, and always will be the scream of innocence, in accord with the age-old scale and register.

Nothing has changed.

Except maybe manners, ceremonies, dances.

Yet the gesturing of arms shielding the head

has remained the same.

The material part writhes, struggles, and tries to break away.

Bowl above it falls, pulls in its knee

bruises, swells, drop salivas and bleeds.

Nothing has changed.

Except for the courses of rivers,

the contours of forests, seashores, uninhabiteds and icebergs.

Among these landscapes the poor spirit winds,

vanishes, returns, approaches, retreats

A stranger to itself, evasive,

at single moment sure, the next unsure of its existence,

while the material part is and is and is

and has no place to move

WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996 was born in 1923 in Kornik, Poland. Her nine convolutions of poetry include Wielka liczba (A Great Number) (1976) Ludzie na moscie (People upon the Bridge) (1986), and Koniec i Poczatek (The extremity and the Beginning) (1993). Szymborska lives in Krakow, Poland. JOANNA TRZECIAK'S translations of Szymborska's metrical composition have appeared in The fresh Yorker, Harper's, Poetry, The Times Literary addition and Atlantic Monthly, among others. Her translation of Tomek Tryzna's novel Panna Nikt (Miss Nobody), was freshly published by Doubleday.

Copyright World poesy Incorporated Mar/Apr 1999

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