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mckenzeeFirst Love by Wislawa Szymborska
translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
They say
the first love’s most important.
That’s very romantic,
but not my experience.
Something was and wasn’t there between us,
something that 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
at a chilly table.
Other loves
still breathe deep inside me.
This one’s too short of breathe even to sigh.
Yet, just exactly as it is,
it does what the others still can’t manage:
unremembered,
not even seen in dreams,
it introduces me to death.
I love that fourth stanza.
translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
They say
the first love’s most important.
That’s very romantic,
but not my experience.
Something was and wasn’t there between us,
something that 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
at a chilly table.
Other loves
still breathe deep inside me.
This one’s too short of breathe even to sigh.
Yet, just exactly as it is,
it does what the others still can’t manage:
unremembered,
not even seen in dreams,
it introduces me to death.
I love that fourth stanza.