Nothing Twice

Eleven or so years ago, I discovered the poetry of Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska and longed to possess a book of her poems. Sadly, her poems, in print, were difficult to find in India.

Then, out of the blue, a friend announced his trip to Poland with his Polish girlfriend (now wife). I jumped at the opportunity and pestered him into obtaining an anthology of Wislawa Szymborska for me – with dire consequences to his life upon his return, should he fail to fulfill my request.

Of course, he had no idea who Wislawa Szymborska was. So, he couldn’t see the meaning in my threat, until his girlfriend enlightened him on Polish literature – and my sincerity. After all, Wislawa Szymborska is something of a national treasure in Poland (she passed away in 2012), apart from being a humanist and a renowned writer.

Happily for me, on 25 July 2008 (exactly 11 years ago today), this friend of mine handed over a brand new hardcover copy of Nothing Twice (Selected Poems) – an anthology of 120 poems by Wislawa Szymborska, both in Polish and in English (translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh), published soon after she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.

This means, out of the 250 or so poems written by Wislawa Szymborska, half of them are contained in this collection.

Here is the poem from the title of the anthology:

Nothing Twice Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice. Even if there is no one dumber, if you're the planet's biggest dunce, you can't repeat the class in summer: this course is only offered once. No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses. One day, perhaps some idle tongue mentions your name by accident: I feel as if a rose were flung into the room, all hue and scent. The next day, though you're here with me, I can't help looking at the clock: A rose? A rose? What could that be? Is it a flower or a rock? Why do we treat the fleeting day with so much needless fear and sorrow? It's in its nature not to say Today is always gone tomorrow With smiles and kisses, we prefer to seek accord beneath our star, although we're different (we concur) just as two drops of water are. [Citation: Nothing Twice, a poem by Wislawa Szymborska, translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, from the anthology Nothing Twice (Selected Poems) by Wislawa

Szymborska, published by Wydawnictwo Literackie, Poland, 1997.]