Psalm
Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states!
How many clouds float past them with impunity;
how much desert sand shifts from one land to another;
how many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil
in provocative hops!
Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers
or alights on the roadblock at the border?
A humble robin - still, its tail resides abroad
while its beak stays home. If that weren't enough, it won't stop bobbing!
Among innumerable insects, I'll single out only the ant
between the border guard's left and right boots
blithely ignoring the questions "Where from?" and "Where to?"
Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos
prevailing on every continent!
Isn't that a privet on the far bank
smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river?
And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms,
would disrupt the sacred bounds of territorial waters?
And how can we talk of order overall?
when the very placement of the stars
leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?
Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting!
And dust blowing all over the steppes
as if they hadn't been partitioned!
And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves,
that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!
Only what is human can truly be foreign.
The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.
by Wislawa Szymborska
How leaky are the borders of man-made states!
Human beings' history is somehow terrible. We not only divide people but also things that we possess. Why don't we stop for a while to look at nature. To look at clouds floating, sand spreading, birds flying without limits; privet, squids, stretch out of their boundary; fog, dust, and radio waves travel wherever they want. Why don't we listen to the ants' perspective for a moment. They tell us that they feel unobliged to answer... Human beings are so insignificant; yet, so arrogant.
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