Poets take us into the grass that has overgrown causes and effects, to that place where we unearth rusted-out arguments

75092318oquvuzkl_2 The End and the Beginning

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

We’ll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.

-Wislawa Szymborska

About Patti Digh

Patti Digh is an author, speaker, and educator who builds learning communities and gets to the heart of difficult topics. Her work over the last three decades has focused on diversity, inclusion, social justice, and living and working mindfully. She has developed diversity strategies and educational programming for major nonprofit and corporate organizations and has been a featured speaker at many national and international conferences.

2 comments to " Poets take us into the grass that has overgrown causes and effects, to that place where we unearth rusted-out arguments "
  • The poem and image go so beautifully together!

  • Guess which Donna

    I love Wislawa Szymborska…what I know of her poetry, that is.

    Even if someone left a brand new $400.00 Neuton lawn mower on my porch with a big bow on it, I would still sometimes want to let the grass get knee-high tall so all the wild things could continue to grow and bloom there. And then, when it was time finally to mow down those blowing curtains of blades hiding all kinds of wonders, I would want to celebrate with the roar of my old $100 lawn mower fueled once again to check the fury of summer. I would walk along behind it in the cooling evening so I could finish at dusk and wonder what the yard would like in the morning. Or, I would start midmorning on a Saturday, finishing before my adolescent children pulled themselves through the hallucinagenic qualities of childhood memories blown like an olfactory alarm into their dreams of lonely walks away from it all into far away worlds. And I would rest then in the rocking chair on the front porch far from the gas fumes of the old mower left to cool in the backyard. I would dream a little too and watch the neighbors’ dogs stop, raising their noses to the breeze to catch the scent of the fresh cut grass.

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