(Non)stirrings of the past


I feel a certain tug in the heart reading this poem by the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska:


FIRST LOVE


They say
the first love's most important
but not my experience.

Something was and wasn't there between us,
something went on and went away.

My hands never tremble
when I stumble on silly keepsakes
and a sheaf of letters tied with string --
not even ribbon.

Our only meeting after years:
the conversation of two chairs
and a chilly table.

Other loves
still breathe deep inside me.
This one's too short of breath even to sigh.

Yet, just exactly as it is,
it does what others still can't manage:
unremembered,
not even seen in dreams,
it introduces me to death.

- from the New Yorker Anniversary Issue (2004)
(translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)