ERINNA FROM TELOS

[kvschwartz.livejournal.com]

She was nineteen when she died.
We don't know if she was lovely and flirtatious,
or if perhaps she looked like those
intelligent, dry girls in glasses
from whom mirrors are hidden.
She left behind just a few hexameters.
We suspect that she strove
with the secret, uncertain ambition of introverts.
Her parents loved her to distraction.
We speculate that she wanted to express
some vast truth about life, ruthless
on the surface, sweet inside,
about August nights, when the sea
breathes and shines and sings like a starling,
and about love, ineffable and dear.
We don't know if she cried when she met darkness.
She left behind only a few hexameters
and an epigram about a grasshopper.

-Adam Zagajewski
(translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh)

[reprinted, *without* permission, from "The New Yorker", May 19, 2003]