I Knocked My Head against the Wall

By Anna Swir 1909–1984 Anna Swir

As a child

I put my finger in the fire

to become

a saint.

As a teenager

every day I would knock my head against the wall.

As a young girl

I went out through a window of a garret

to the roof

in order to jump.

As a woman

I had lice all over my body.

They cracked when I was ironing my sweater.

I waited sixty minutes

to be executed.

I was hungry for six years.

Then I bore a child,

they were carving me

without putting me to sleep.

Then a thunderbolt killed me

three times and I had to rise from the dead three times

without anyone’s help.

Now I am resting

after three resurrections.

Anna Swir, “I Knocked My Head against the Wall” 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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