A poem to usher in the new year, 2020.

A TALE BEGUN   

By Wislawa Szymborska

The world is never ready

For the birth of a child.

Our ships are not yet back from Winnland

We still have to get over the S. Gothard pass.

We’ve got to outwit the watchmen on the desert of Thor,

fight our way through the sewers of Warsaw’s centre,

gain access to King Harold, the Butterpat,

and wait until the downfall of minister Fouche.

Only in Acapulco

Can we begin anew.

We’ve run out of bandages,

Matches, hydraulic presses, arguments and water.

We haven’t got the trucks, we haven’t got the Minghs’ support.

The skinny horse won’t be enough to bribe the sheriff.

No news so far about the Tartars’ captives.

We’ll need a warmer cave for winter

And someone who can speak Harari.

We don’t know whom to trust in Ninevah,

what conditions the Prince-Cardinal will decree,

which names Beria has still got inside his files,

They say Karol the Hammer strikes tomorrow at dawn.

In this situation, let’s appease Cheops,

report ourselves of our own free will,

change faiths,

pretend to be friends with the Doge,

and say that we’ve got nothing to do with the Kwabe tribe.

Time to light the fires.

Let’s send a cable to grandma in Zabierzow.

Let’s untie the knots in the yurt’s leather straps.

May delivery be easy,

may our child grow and be well.

Let him be happy, from time to time

and leap over abysses.

Let his heart have strength to endure

And his mind be awake and reach far.

But not so far that it sees into the future.

Spare him

that one gift,

O heavenly powers.

Wislawa Szymborska, a Polish poet won the Nobel Prize for her work in 1996. She died in 2012. She was a fearless champion of human rights and a great poet.