Like many, I first discovered Wislawa Szymborska when she won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature. This ran again this week in the online edition of the New York Review of Books. I don’t love cats, but this is very fine.
Cat in an Empty Apartment
Die—you can’t do that to a cat.
Since what can a cat do
in an empty apartment?
Climb the walls?
Rub up against the furniture?
Nothing seems different here
but nothing is the same.
Nothing’s been moved
but there’s more space.
And at nighttime no lamps are lit.
Footsteps on the staircase,
but they’re new ones.
The hand that puts fish on the saucer
has changed, too.
Something doesn’t start
at its usual time.
Something doesn’t happen
as it should.
Someone was always, always here,
then suddenly disappeared
and stubbornly stays disappeared.
Every closet’s been examined.
Every shelf has been explored.
Excavations under the carpet turned up nothing.
A commandment was even broken:
papers scattered everywhere.
What remains to be done.
Just sleep and wait.
Just wait till he turns up,
just let him show his face.
Will he ever get a lesson
on what not to do to a cat.
Sidle toward him
as if unwilling
and ever so slow
on visibly offended paws,
and no leaps or squeals at least to start.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.
She knows her furbags, all right. Thanks.
Hugo, what’s the best book of her poems in English? On amazon I found “Poems New and Collected”, “View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems” and “Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska”, which is shorter. Isn’t there her full collection?