VELIKO ŠTEVILO
Štiri milijarde je ljudi na zemlji,
a moja domišljija je kot nekdaj.
Slabo se znajde v velikih številih.
Še zmeraj jo gane posameznost.
Frfota v temi kot sij svetilke,
pokaže le obraze, ki so bliže,
vse drugo je spregledano,
nenadomestljivo, nepojmljivo.
Tega pa bi si še sam Dante ne zapomnil,
a kaj šele, če nisi kakor on.
Čeprav bi mi vse muze pomagale.
Non omnis moriar - prezgodnja zaskrbljenost.
Ali pa res vsa živim in ali to zadošča?
Nikoli ni zadoščalo in tem manj danes.
Izbiram in zavračam, drugo ni mogoče.
A to, kar zametujem, je številnejše,
gostejše je in bolj vsiljivo kot kdajkoli.
Za ceno nepopisnih izgub - le pesem, vzdih.
Na glasen klic odzivam se s šepetom.
Koliko zamolčim, tega ne bom izdala.
Miška ob vznožju rodne gore.
Življenje traja kakor sled krempeljca na pesku.
Še moje sanje niso obljudene, kot bi se spodobilo.
Več je samote v njih kot vrveža in množic.
Za hip se v njih pojavi kdo, ki je že zdavnaj mrtev.
Na kljuko kdaj pa kdaj pritisne roka.
Prazna hiša je obraščena s prizidki odmeva.
S praga pohitim v dolino,
tiho, kot nikogaršnjo, prav nesodobno.
Od kod se ta prostranost jemlje v meni -
res ne vem.
(Wisława Szymborska, prev. Rozka Štefan)
A LARGE NUMBER
Four billion people on this earth,
but my imagination is the way it's always been:
bad with large numbers.
It is still moved by particularity.
It flits about the darkness like a flashlight beam,
disclosing only random faces,
while the rest go blindly by,
unthought of, unpitied.
Not even a Dante could have stopped that.
So what do you do when you are not,
even with all your muses on your side?
Non omnis moriar - a premature worry.
Yet am I fully alive, and is that enough?
It never has been, and even less so now.
I select by rejecting, for there's no other way,
but what I reject, is more numerous,
more dense, more intrusive than ever.
At the cost of untold losses - a poem, a sigh.
I reply with the whisper to a thunderous calling.
How much I am silent about I can't say.
A mouse at the foot of mother mountain.
Life lasts as long as a few lines of claws in the sand.
My dreams - even they are not as populous as they should be.
There is more solitude in them than crowds or clamor.
Sometimes someone long dead will drop by for a bit.
A single hand turns a knob.
Annexes of echo overgrow the empty house.
I run from the threshold down into the quiet
valley seemingly no one's - an anachronism by now.
Where does all this space still in me come from -
that I don't know.
(Wisława Szymborska)
. . .
