Love At First Sight

Poem by Wisława Szymborska, a Nobel laureate, 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Both are convinced

that a sudden surge of emotion bound them together.

Beautiful is such a certainty,

but uncertainty is more beautiful.

Because they didn’t know each other earlier, they suppose that

nothing was happening between them.

What of the streets, stairways and corridors

where they could have passed each other long ago?

I’d like to ask them whether they remember—perhaps in a revolving door

ever being face to face?

an “excuse me” in a crowd

or a voice “wrong number” in the receiver.

But I know their answer:

no, they don’t remember.

They’d be greatly astonished

to learn that for a long time

chance had been playing with them.

Not yet wholly ready

to transform into fate for them

it approached them, then backed off,

stood in their way and, suppressing a giggle,

jumped to the side.

There were signs, signals: 

but what of it if they were illegible.

Perhaps three years ago,

or last Tuesday

did a certain leaflet fly from shoulder to shoulder?

There was something lost and picked up.

Who knows but what it was a ball

in the bushes of childhood.

There were doorknobs and bells

on which earlier touch piled on touch.

Bags beside each other in the luggage room.

Perhaps they had the same dream on a certain night,

suddenly erased after waking.

Every beginning

is but a continuation,

and the book of events

is never more than half open.

-translated by Walter Whipple-