Well, I've spent the last two ays spinning wheels, helping my wife make flight rearrangements for a meeting in Minneapolis that she has helped organize and which over half the people will no longer be attending. So far she has progressed from Portland, Maine, to Philadelphia, to Pittsburgh, and from her last call well on her way to St. Louis. What a way to see the country...

Any Case

By Wislawa Szymborska

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Closer. Farther away.
It happened, but not to you.

You survived because you were first.
You survived because you were last.
Because alone. Because the others.
Because on the left. Because on the right.
Because it was raining. Because it was sunny.
Because a shadow fell.

Luckily there was a forest.
Luckily there were no trees.
Luckily a rail, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A frame, a turn, an inch, a second.
Luckily a straw was floating on the water.

Thanks to, thus, in spite of, and yet.
What would have happened if a hand, a leg,
One step, a hair away—

So you are here? Straight from that moment still suspended?
The net's mesh was tight, but you—through the mesh?
I can't stop wondering at it, can't be silent enough.
Listen,
How quickly your heart is beating in me.


(translated from the Polish by Grazyna Drabik & Sharon Olds)