Anna Swir / I’ll Open the Window

I’ll Open the Window

BY ANNA SWIR

 Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

Our embrace lasted too long.

We loved right down to the bone.

I hear the bones grind, I see

our two skeletons.

Now I am waiting

till you leave, till

the clatter of your shoes

is heard no more. Now, silence.

Tonight I am going to sleep alone

on the bedclothes of purity.

Aloneness

is the first hygienic measure.

Aloneness

will enlarge the walls of the room,

I will open the window

and the large, frosty air will enter,

healthy as tragedy.

Human thoughts will enter

and human concerns,

misfortune of others, saintliness of others.

They will converse softly and sternly.

Do not come anymore.

I am an animal

very rarely.

Talking to My Body (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1996)