Most of the earth's inhabitants work to get by. They work because they have to. They didn't pick this or that occupation out of passion; the circumst… - Wisława Szymborska

Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself.

Psalm

How leaky are the borders of man-made states!
How many clouds float over them scot-free,
how much desert sand sifts from country to country,
how many mountain pebbles roll onto foreign turf
in provocative leaps!

Need I cite each and every bird as it flies,
or alights, as now, on the lowered gate?
Even if be a sparrow — its tail is abroad,
Though its beak is still home. As if that weren’t enough — it keeps fidgeting!

Out of countless insects I will single out the ant,
who, between the guard’s left and right boots,
feels unobliged to answer questions of origin and destination.

If only this whole mess could be seen at once in detail
on every continent!
Isn’t that a privet on the opposite bank
smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river?
Who else but the squid, brazenly long-armed,
would violate the sacred territorial waters.?

How can we speak of any semblance of order
when we can’t rearrange the stars
to know which one shines for whom?

Not to mention the reprehensible spreading of fog!
Or the dusting of the steppe over its entire range
as though it weren’t split in two!
Or voices carried over accommodating air waves:
summoning squeals and suggestive gurgles!

Only what’s human can be truly alien.
The rest is mixed forest, undermining moles, and wind.

A Note

Life is the only way
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on the sand,
rise on wings;

to be a dog,
or stroke its warm fur;

to tell pain
from everything it's not;

to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to seek the least of all possible mistakes.

An extraordinary chance
to remember for a moment
a conversation held
with the lamp switched off;

and if only once
to stumble upon a stone,
end up soaked in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass;
and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;
and to keep on not knowing
something important.