Autotomy
In danger, the holothurian splits itself in two:
it offers one self to be devoured by the world
and, in its second self, escapes.
Violently it divides itself into a doom and a salvation,
into a penalty and a recompense,
into what was and what will be.
In the middle of the holothurian’s body a chasm opens
and its edges immediately become alien to each other.
On the one edge, death, on the other, life.
Here despair, there hope.
If there is a balance, the scales do not move.
If there is justice, here it is.
To die as much as necessary, without overstepping the bounds.
To grow again from a salvaged remnant.
We, too, know how to split ourselves
but only into the flesh and a broken whisper.
Into the flesh and poetry.
On one side the throat, on the other, laughter,
slight, quickly dying down.
Here a heavy heart, there non omnis moriar,
Three little words, like three little plumes of light.
We are not cut in two by a chasm.
A chasm surrounds us.
- Wislawa Szymborska
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