Stones, pebbles, and a bonus poem

It's time to honor the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature, who died on February 1st 2012 at age 88. The Nobel committee described her as the "Mozart of poetry" but with "something of the fury of Beethoven."  Her poem "Conversation with a Stone" is beguilingly simple yet reveals the complexity, not to mention the bravery, of facing one's poetic muse. After the speaker verbally wrestles with the stone in over ten stanzas, the poem ends

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in."

I don't have a door," says the stone.

Szymborska's compatriot Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998) finds the lowly pebble to be just as inscrutable:

Pebbles cannot be tamed
to the end they will look at us
with a calm eye and very clear eye

though Herbert admits that a pebble's

ardour and coldness
are just and full of dignity

In contrast to this poem-pair, the American poet laureate Charles Simic (who was born and spent his formative years in Yugoslavia) has an easier time getting at the essence of a stone. Here's the opening of this blog's "bonus poem":

Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger's tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.

 

       Conversation with a Stone  (Wislawa Szymborska)

I knock at the stone’s front door.

“It’s only me, let me come in.

I want to enter your insides,

have a look round,

breathe my fill of you.”

“Go away,” says the stone.

“I’m shut tight.

Even if you break me to pieces,

we’ll all still be closed.

You can grind us to sand,

we still won’t let you in.”

I knock at the stone’s front door.

“It’s only me, let me come in.

I’ve come out of pure curiosity.

Only life can quench it.

I mean to stroll through your palace,

then go calling on a leaf, a drop of water.

I don’t have much time.

My mortality should touch you.”

“I’m made of stone,” says the stone.

“and must therefore keep a straight face.

Go away.

I don’t have the muscles to laugh.”

I knock at the stone’s front door.

“It’s only me, let me come in.

I hear you have great empty halls inside you,

unseen, their beauty in vain,

soundless, not echoing anyone’s steps.

Admit you don’t know them well yourself.”

“Great and empty, true enough,” says the stone,

“but there isn’t any room.

Beautiful, perhaps, but not to the taste

of your poor senses.

You may get to know me, but you’ll never know me through.

My whole surface is turned toward you,

all my insides turned away.”

I knock at the stone’s front door.

“It’s only me, let me come in.

I don’t seek refuge for eternity.

I’m not unhappy.

I’m not homeless.

My world is worth returning to.

I’ll enter and exit empty-handed

And my proof I was there

will be only words,

which no one will believe.”

“You shall not enter,” says the stone.

“You lack the sense of taking part.

No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.

Even sight heightened to become all-seeing

will do you no good without a sense of taking part.

You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what that sense should be,

only its seed, imagination.”

I knock at the stone’s front door.

“It’s only me, let me come in.

I haven’t got two thousand centuries,

so let me come under your roof.”

If you don’t believe me,” says the stone,

“just ask the leaf, it will tell you the same.

Ask a drop of water, it will say what the leaf has said.

And, finally, ask a hair from your own head.

I am bursting with laughter, yes, laughter, vast laughter,

although I don’t know how to laugh.”

I knock at the stone’s front door.

“It’s only me, let me come in.”

“I don’t have a door,” says the stone.

        (from Poems New and Collected 1957–1997, pages 62-64, translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, Harcourt, Inc, Orlando, Florida © 1998) 

       Pebble  (Zbigniew Herbert)

The pebble

is a perfect creature

equal to itself

mindful of its limits

filled exactly

with a pebbly meaning

with a scent that does not remind one of anything

does not frighten anyone away does not arouse desire

Its ardour and coldness

are just and full of dignity

I feel a heavy remorse

when I hold it in my hand

and its noble body

is permeated by false warmth

            —Pebbles cannot be tamed

            to the end they will look at us

            with a calm and very clear eye

 

        (from Selected Poems, page 108, translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott, The Ecco Press, Hopewell, NJ © 1968) 

       Stone  (Charles Simic)  

Go inside a stone

That would be my way.

Let somebody else become a dove

Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.

I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:

No one knows how to answer it.

Even though a cow steps on it full weight,

Even though a child throws it into a river;

The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed

To the river bottom

Where the fished come to knock on it

And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out

When two stones are rubbed,

So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;

Perhaps there is a moon shining

From somewhere, as though behind a hill—

Just enough light to make out

The strange writings, the start-charts

On the inner walls.

        (from What the Grass Says, George Braziller, New York, NY © 1967)