Myself and My Person

By Anna Swir 1909–1984 Anna Swir

There are moments

when I feel more clearly than ever

that I am in the company

of my own person.

This comforts and reassures me,

this heartens me,

just as my tridimensional body

is heartened by my own authentic shadow.

There are moments

when I really feel more clearly than ever

that I am in the company

of my own person.

I stop

at a street corner to turn left

and I wonder what would happen

if my own person walked to the right.

Until now that has not happened

but it does not settle the question.

Anna Swir, “Myself and My Person” from Talking to My Body, translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan. Copyright © 1996 by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Source: Talking to My Body (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1996)

Biography

Anna Swir (Świrszczyńska) was born in Warsaw, Poland, to an artistic though impoverished family. She worked from an early age, supporting herself while she attended university to study medieval Polish literature. In the 1930s she worked for a teachers’ association, served as an editor, and began publishing poetry. Swir joined the Resistance during World War II and worked as a military nurse during the Warsaw Uprising; at one . . .

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