I wrote an album of music loosely based on her poetry. If you love Szymborska you will definitely dig our new album!

Check it out here:

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/CloserOcean

http://www.closerocean.com

Thanks for listening!

Kevin

The soul is absent superficially but always present profoundly and I disagree with the statement that it disappears when we chop vegetables!
cooking with friends and sharing meals together (notice I said with friends) is one of the most soulful (available to us all) experiences…

yes…clocks and mirrors…the two enemies of the old…how can your soul like those? how can an old soul even care about the arch-superficial mirror?

but never mind me…I am parsing the poem like a cold engineer that I can become when my soul is wandering on the Malibu beach somewhere!

“the kindness of the blind”

A poet is reading to the blind.
He did not suspect it was so hard.
His voice is breaking.
His hands are shaking.
He feels that here each sentence
is put to the test of the dark.
It will have to fend for itself
without the lights or colors.
A perilous adventure
for the stars in his poems,
for the dawn, the rainbow, the clouds, neon lights, the moon,
for the fish until now so silver under water,
and the hawk so silently high in the sky.
He is reading—for it is too late to stop—
of a boy in a jacket yellow in the green meadow,
of red rooftops easy to spot in the valley,
the restless numbers on the players’ shirts,
and a nude stranger in the door cracked open.
He would like to pass over—though it’s not an option—
all those saints on the cathedral’s ceiling,
that farewell wave from the train window,
the microscope lens, ray of light in the gem,
video screens, and mirrors, and the album with faces.
Yet great is the kindness of the blind,
great their compassion and generosity.
They listen, smile, and clap.
One of them even approaches
with a book held topsy-turvy
to ask for an invisible autograph.

Thanks a lot for this lovley sample of Wislawa Szymborska’s brilliance. All her poems have that contemporary Euro-touch, making everyday events and small things that make up a routine day, full of inexpressible mystique and enigmatic revelations.

She is one of the major poets today, no doubt.
Thanks a lot for keeping our souls dusted and oil-slick free….

Cheerz!

Max