Autotomy
Halinæ Poświatowskæ in memoriam

In danger, the holothurian splits itself in two:
it offers one self to be devoured by the world
and, in its second self, escapes. 

Violently it divides itself into a doom and a salvation,
into a penalty and a recompense, into what was and what
will be. 

In the middle of the holothurian's body a chasm opens
and its edges immediately become alien to each other. 

On the one edge, death, on the other, life.
Here despair, there hope. 

If there is balance, the scales do not move.
If there is justice, here it is. 

To die as much as necessary, without overstepping the bounds.
To grow again from a salvaged remnant. 

We, too, know how to split ourselves
but only into the flesh and a broken whisper.
Into the flesh and poetry. 

On one side the throat, on the other, laughter,
slight, quickly dying down. 

Here a heavy heart, there non omnis moriar,
Three little words, like three little plumes of light. 

We are not cut in two by a chasm.
A chasm surrounds us.

Wisława Szymborska. Czeslaw Milosz (trad.)