Sky

The sky is where we should have started.

A window without a windowsill, without a frame, without a pane.

An opening wide open, with nothing

beyond it.

I don’t have to wait for a starry night,

nor crane my neck,

to look at the sky.

I have the sky behind me, and close at hand and on my eyelids.

It is the sky that wraps me tight

and raises me from underneath.

The highest mountains

are no closer than the deepest valleys

to the sky.

No place has any more of it

than any other place.

A cloud is as thoroughly

crushed by the sky as a grave.

A mole is as high, sky high

as an owl beating its wings.

Whatever falls into an abyss,

falls from sky to sky.

Friable, fluid, rocky,

flammable, volatile stretches

of sky, crumbs of sky,

gusts of sky, heaps of sky.

Sky is omnipresent,

even in darkness under the skin.

I eat the sky, I excrete the sky.

I’m a trap in a trap,

an inhabited inhabitant,

an embrace embraced,

a question that answers a question.

Dividing earth and sky

is not the right way

to think about this wholeness.

It only allows one to live

at a more precise address—

were I to be searched for

I’d be found much faster.

My distinguishing marks

are rapture and despair.

—Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Joanna Trzeciak