A Literary Interlude: Wislawa Szymborska
A Medieval Miniature
Up the verdantest of hills,
in this most equestrian of pageants,
wearing the silkiest of cloaks.
Toward a castle with seven towers,
each of them by far the tallest.
In the foreground, a duke,
most flatteringly unrotund;
by his side, his duchess
young and fair beyond compare.
Behind them, the ladies-in-waiting,
all pretty as pictures, verily,
then a page, the most ladsome of lads,
and perched upon his pagey shoulder
something exceedingly monkeylike,
endowed with the drollest of faces
and tails.
Following close behind, three knights,
all chivalry and rivalry,
so if the first is fearsome of countenance,
the next one strives to be more daunting still,
and if he prances on a bay steed
the third will prance upon a bayer,
and all twelve hooves dance glancingly
atop the most wayside of daisies.
Whereas whosoever is downcast and weary,
cross-eyed and out at elbows,
is most manifestly left out of the scene.
Even the least pressing of questions,
burgherish or peasantish,
cannot survive beneath this most azure of skies.
And not even the eaglest of eyes
could spy even the tiniest of gallows -
nothing casts the slightest shadow of a doubt.
Thus they proceed most pleasantly
through this feudalest of realisms.
This same, however, has seen to the scene's balance:
it has given them their Hell in the next frame.
Oh yes, all that went without
even the silentest of sayings.
-- Wislawa Szymborska
Posted on 08/09/2012 2:45 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald
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