by Wislawa Szymborska translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
We have a soul at times. No one’s got it non-stop, for keeps.
Day after day, year after year may pass without it.
Sometimes it will settle for awhile only in childhood’s fears and raptures. Sometimes only in astonishment that we are old.
It rarely lends a hand in uphill tasks, like moving furniture, or lifting luggage, or going miles in shoes that pinch.
It usually steps out whenever meat needs chopping or forms have to be filled.
For every thousand conversations it participates in one, if even that, since it prefers silence.
Just when our body goes from ache to pain, it slips off-duty.
It’s picky: it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds, our hustling for a dubious advantage and creaky machinations make it sick.
Joy and sorrow aren’t two different feelings for it. It attends us only when the two are joined.
We can count on it when we’re sure of nothing and curious about everything.
Among the material objects it favors clocks with pendulums and mirrors, which keep on working even when no one is looking.
It won’t say where it comes from or when it’s taking off again, though it’s clearly expecting such questions.
We need it but apparently it needs us for some reason too.