To My Own Poem
Best case scenario —
you'll be, my poem, read attentively,
discussed, remembered.
Worst comes to worst,
only read.
A third option —
actually written,
but tossed into the trash a moment later.
The fourth and final possibility —
you slip away unwritten,
happily humming something to yourself.
_________________________
Wislawa Szymborska
M A P
Collected and Last Poems
translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh & Stanislaw Baranczak
Houghton Mifflin 2015
