In honor of Wislawa Szymborska

Wislawa Szymborska died yesterday. She was 88, she won the Nobel prize for literature, and was one of my favorite poets in any language.

I will now revert to the present tense, because her poems have not died. They are thoughtful, funny, delicate, mordant or gentle, and very precise but not fussy. They are poems about dinosaurs, about terrorists, about the soul, about losing your umbrella in the tram.

This is one of my favorites:

( Cat in an empty apartment )