wislawa szymborska | drinking wine

Poetry Dispatch No. 125 | November 20, 2006

LOVE POETRY WEEK, Monday, No.2

“I liken love to a great house, a mansion that once you go in, the big door shuts behind you and you have no idea, no premonition where it will all lead to. Chambers, vaults, confounded mazes, ladders, scaffolding, into darkness, out of darkness—anything.” Edna O’Brien from JOHNNY I HARDLY KNEW YOU

DRINKING WINE by Wislawa Szymborska translated by Grazýna Drabik and Sharon Olds

He looked, and gave me beauty,
and I took it as if mine.
Happy, I swallowed a star.

I allowed myself to be
invented in the likeness
of the reflection in his eyes.
I am dancing, dancing
in the flutter of sudden wings.

A table is a table,
wine is wine in a glass
that is just a glass and stands
standing on a table. While
I am imaginary
to the point of no belief,
imaginary
to the point of blood.

I am telling him
what he wants to hear: ants
dying of love under
the constellation of the dandelion.
I swear that a white rose,
sprinkled with wine, sings.

I am laughing, tilting
my head carefully
as if checking an invention.
I am dancing, dancing
in astonished skin, in
an embrace that creates me.

Eve from a rib, Venus from sea-foam,
Minerva from Jove’s head —
all were more real than I.

When he stops looking at me
I search for my reflection
on a wall. And I see only
a nail from which a picture
has been removed.

from Calyx, Special International Issue, 1980