I’ll Open the Window

By Anna Swir 1909–1984 Anna Swir

Our embrace lasted too long.

We loved right down to the bone.

I hear the bones grind, I see

our two skeletons.

Now I am waiting

till you leave, till

the clatter of your shoes

is heard no more. Now, silence.

Tonight I am going to sleep alone

on the bedclothes of purity.

Aloneness

is the first hygienic measure.

Aloneness

will enlarge the walls of the room,

I will open the window

and the large, frosty air will enter,

healthy as tragedy.

Human thoughts will enter

and human concerns,

misfortune of others, saintliness of others.

They will converse softly and sternly.

Do not come anymore.

I am an animal

very rarely.

Anna Swir, “I’ll Open the Window” 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 (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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