songs of experience

***

“We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
of forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just wehn our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

It’s picky:
it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow
aren’t two different feelings for it.
It attends to us
only when the two are joined.

We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.”

-from A Few Words on the Soul
by, Wislawa Szymborska