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Post by ernesto thaddeus m. solmerano on Jun 13, 2007 6:23:13 GMT -5
The End and the Beginning By Wislawa Szymborska
After every war someone has to tidy up. Things won’t pick themselves up, after all.
Someone has to shove the rubble to the roadsides so the carts loaded with corpses can get by.
Someone has to trudge through sludge and ashes, through the sofa springs, the shards of glass, the bloody rags.
Someone has to lug the post to prop the wall, someone has to glaze the window, set the door in its frame.
No sound bites, no photo opportunities, and it takes years. All the cameras have gone to other wars.
The bridges need to be rebuilt, the railroad stations, too. Shirtsleeves will be rolled to shreds.
Someone, broom in hand, still remembers how it was. Someone else listens, nodding his unshattered head. But others are bound to be bustling nearby who’ll find all that a little boring.
From time to time someone still must dig up a rusted argument from underneath a bush and haul it off to the dump.
Those who knew what this was all about must make way for those who know little. And less than that. And at last nothing less than nothing.
Someone has to lie there In the grass that covers up the causes and effects with a cornstalk in his teeth, gawking at clouds.
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