Some Like Poetry

Some --

not all, that is.

Not even the majority of all, but the minority.

Not counting school, where one must,

or the poets themselves,

there’d be maybe two such people in a thousand.

Like --

but one also likes chicken-noodle soup,

one likes compliments and the color blue,

one likes an old scarf,

one likes to prove one’s point,

one likes to pet a dog.

Poetry --

but what sort of thing is poetry?

Many a shaky answer

has been given to this question.

But I do not know and do not know and hold on to it,

as to a saving bannister.

*

Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak