"There are not enough mouths to utter
all your fleeting names, O water.

I would have to name you in every tongue,
pronouncing all the vowels at once

while also keeping silent - for the sake of the lake
that still goes unnamed.

and doesn't exist on this earth, just as the star
reflected in it is not in the sky.

Someone was drowning, someone dying
was calling out for you. Long ago, yesterday.

You have saved houses from fire, you have carried off
houses and trees, forests and towns alike.

You've been in christening fonts and courtesans' baths.
In coffins and kisses.

Gnawing at stone, feeding rainbows.
In the sweat and the dew of pyramids and lilacs.

How light the raindrop's contents are.
How gently the world touches me.

Whenever wherever whatever has happened
is written on water of Babel."

~ Wislawa Szymborska, 1923- ~
From the poem "Water" and the book "View with a Grain of Sand"