[Peace-discuss] The End and the Beginning

[C. G. Estabrook]

	After every war
	someone has to clean up.
	Things won't
	straighten themselves up, after all.

	Someone has to push the rubble
	to the sides of the road,
	so the corpse-laden wagons
	can pass.

	Someone has to get mired
	in scum and ashes,
	sofa springs,
	splintered glass,
	and bloody rags.

	Someone must drag in a girder
	to prop up a wall,
	Someone must glaze a window,
	rehang a door.

	Photogenic it's not,
	and takes years.
	All the cameras have left
	for another war.

	Again we'll need bridges
	and new railway stations.
	Sleeves will go ragged
	from rolling them up.

	Someone, broom in hand,
	still recalls how it was.
	Someone listens
	and nods with unsevered head.

	Yet others milling about
	already find it dull.
	From behind the bush
	sometimes someone still unearths
	rust-eaten arguments
	and carries them to the garbage pile.

	Those who knew
	what was going on here
	must give way to
	those who know little.
	And less than little.
	And finally as little as nothing.
	
	In the grass which has overgrown
	reasons and causes,
	someone must be stretched out
	blade of grass in his mouth
	gazing at the clouds.

[Wislawa Szymborska received the Nobel prize for literature. Born in Poland in 
1923, Szymborska endured the Nazi occupation during World War II and the 
following Soviet occupation.]