The End and the Beginning
The End and the Beginning by Wisława Szymborska The End and the Beginning After every war someone has to clean up. Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all. Someone has to push the rubble to the sides of the road, so the corpse-laden wagons can pass. Someone has to get mired in scum and ashes, sofa springs, splintered glass, and bloody rags. Someone must drag in a girder to prop up a wall. Someone must glaze a window, rehang a door. Photogenic it’s not, and takes years. All the cameras have left for another war. Again we’ll need bridges and new railway stations. Sleeves will go ragged from rolling them up. Someone, broom in hand, still recalls how it was. Someone listens and nods with unsevered head. Yet others milling about already find ...