Tonight, we went out for dinner at an ornate
Chinese restaurant, the kind of place with cocktails
As elaborate as the décor and paper umbrellas
Leaning against the glass. But, there on the menu
Were sea cucumbers in all their caterpillar-like
Glory. I thought immediately of Szymborska’s
Poem “Autotomy,” how when threatened,
The creature divides itself in two and abandons
Part of itself to the predator. Szymborska
Knew that doesn’t work for us, that death
Doesn’t leave some part of our being encased
In poetic glass. We’re visiting my oldest son,
And I’ve brought with me Miłosz’s anthology.1
Szymborska is in there with the rest—I think
They’re all dead now. The anthology is their
Mausoleum and also their café, the place
Where their words meet, even if they’re
No longer here to admire each other or
To disdain—I read somewhere that Miłosz
And Herbert had a falling out in their old age.
Does it matter? If they were holothurians,
Their arguments and grudges would be left behind,
Something for death to chew on, the way it
Takes everything else about us, our bodies,
Our skin, the air that comes out of our throats.
Miłosz believed that all things would be restored,
The meaning, perhaps, of heaven, a recognition
Of how perfect our lives were, even if we didn’t
Know it. In his apartment in Poland, there
Was a bust of his wife who had died. He must
Have stared at her, wondering if she were waiting,
Looking back at their days and nights, gardening,
Planting annuals in pots with damp, black soil,
Picking caterpillars off their green leaves,
Caterpillars that look like small sea cucumbers.
But sea cucumbers don’t make chrysalises
Or grow delicate wings. They break themselves
In two, in terror, unable even to realize what
Their deaths would mean. At the restaurant,
We ordered noodles and shredded chicken,
Salt-and-pepper shrimp and stir-fried green beans.
We saved the sea cucumber for another visit.
- Czeslaw Milosz. Postwar Polish Poetry. Univ of California Press, 8 July 1983. ↩︎
George Franklin is the author of seven poetry collections, including What the Angel Saw, What the Saint Refused and a book of essays, Poetry & Pigeons: Short Essays on Writing. Individual poems have been published in Another Chicago Magazine, Rattle, Cagibi, Sheila-Na-Gig, New Ohio Review, and One Art, among others. He practices law in Miami, is a translation editor for Cagibi, teaches poetry classes in Florida prisons, and co-translated, along with the author, Ximena Gómez’s Último día/Last Day. In 2020, he won the Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, and in 2023, he won the W.B. Yeats Poetry Prize.