Friday’s Poetic Pause: “Utopia” by Wislawa Szymborska

(Thanks to Will @MSIWorldwide for this suggestion!)

Utopia

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

From “A large number”, 1976

Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

Taken from: Nobelprize.org. 30 Sep 2011

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Have some poems you treasure that you’d like to share with fellow aid workers and do-gooders? Please send them my way at email.howmatters@gmail.com!

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