The End and the Beginning

"Photograph from September 11" by Wisława Szymborska (2005)

“Photograph from September 11” was originally published in Szymborska’s 2005 collection of poetry, Monologue of a Dog, and translated into English by Clare Cavanagh. The poem shares many of the same thematic elements present within “The End and the Beginning,” and attempts to humanize large-scale tragedy by centering the affected United States citizens within the narrative of the poem. “Photograph from September 11” grapples with the terrorist attacks committed in New York and Washington, DC, on the same date in 2001. Szymborska focuses on the miniscule details of this tragedy that often go unnoticed, concentrating on the preservation of life instead of detailing the explicit gore of the event. “Photograph from September 11” is written in the same style as “The End and the Beginning,” looking at tragedy from a unique, nuanced angle.

"Identification" by Wisława Szymborska (2010)

Szymborska’s piercing poem “Identification” first appeared in her 2010 collection, Here, translated from Polish into English by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak. The speaker of the poem is a woman who recently lost her husband in an unexpected plane crash. The speaker delays her own confrontation with grief, convincing herself that it must have been someone else that passed away.