Wisława Szymborska - Travel Elegy lyrics

Everything's mine though just on loan, nothing for the memory to hold, though mine as long as I look. Memories come to mind like excavated statues that have misplaced their heads. From the town of Samokov, only rain and more rain. Paris from Louvre to fingernail grows web-eyed by the moment. Boulevard Saint-MartinL some stairs leading into a fadeout. Only a bridge and a half from Leningrad of the bridges. Poor Uppsala, reduced to a splinter of its mighty cathedral. Sofia's hapless dancer, a form without a face. Then separately, his face without eyes; separately again, his eyes with no pupils, and, finally, the pupils of a cat. A Caucasian eagle soars over the reproduction of a canyon, the fool's gold of the sun, the phony stones. Everything's mine but just on loan, nothing for the memory to hold, though mine as long as I look. Inexhaustible, unembracable, but particular to the smallest fiber, grain of sand, drop of water— landscapes. I won't retain one blade of gra** as it's truly seen. Salutation and farewell in a single glance. For surplus and absence alike, a single motion of the neck.