http://pamporock.com/

Wislawa Szymborska
translated by Joanna Trzeciak

He’s one of those men who want to do everything by themselves.
You need to love him along with drawers, cabinets, and shelves,
with what’s on top of cupboards, or inside and sticking out.
Everything is going to come in handy without a doubt.
Drills, hammers, files, chisels, melting pots, and pliers,
bundles of string, springs and umbrella wires,
squeezed-out tubes, dried-out glue,
jars big and small where something already grew,
an assortment of pebbles, a little anvil, a vise,
an alarm clock that’s already been broken twice,
a dead beetle in a soap dish, beside an empty vial,
on which a skull and crossbones have been painted in grand style,
a batten, short and long plugs, buckles, and a gasket,
a Lake Mamry water hen’s three feathers in a basket,
a few champagne corks stuck in cement,
two glass slides scorched in the course of an experiment,
a pile of bars, some cardboard boxes, tiles, a gutter spout,
and fitting used for them all might soon be figured out,
some handles to something, scraps of leather, a blanket torn to shreds,
a boyish slingshot, scads of keys, and screws of varied threads…
May I throw out a thing or two?—I put this to him dearly,
but in response the man I love just looked at me severely.