The Sea and the Man
You will not tame this sea
either by humility or rapture.
But you can laugh
in its face.
Laughter
was invented by those
who live briefly
as a burst of laughter.
The eternal sea
will never learn to laugh.
Notes
Where Jeffrey McDaniel’s The Quiet World rationed human intimacy to an artificial economy of one hundred words a day, forcing lovers to compress desire into silent telephone clicks, Anna Świrszczyńska strips the speaking subject down to raw, vulnerable flesh against the colossal, indifferent breathing of the open sea. The fragile ego stands exposed at the water's edge, discovering that the self is neither an exceptional origin nor a sealed archive, but an ephemeral biological fold in a vast, self-perpetuating system that continuously swallows, negates, and reconstitutes its own matter. It grounds September’s theme of Echo in the brutal, somatic rhythm of the shoreline, reminding us that repetition is not a gentle nostalgic loop, but the unyielding, altered wave that returns to wash away our illusions of permanence. #September #Annaswir #Echo #Memory #Poetry