The winner of Nobel Prize for literature in the year 1996, Wislawa Szymborska is among the foremost writers in Poland at
present times. She is known for her down to reality poems and beautiful picturisation of everyday life and events. She brings in light the ordinary, and once they are summed up as a poem they no more are ordinary, and credit goes to her foresight and practical knowledge.
“Koniec I poczatek” is the Polish title of this poem. This poem reflects on war and the untold suffering that is thrust upon the
people just to satisfy the whim of few. Just look at the war between India & Pakistan, or Gulf War, what do they end in, just suffering.
The remains that are left after every war, screams of the atrocities they witnessed on living souls. The sky and earth all mourn to the sad end of some innocent beings. And don’t forget the chaos and dirt left around, to this poet says the remaining people ought to clear all this to make place for their survival. They need to clean all filth left on the roadsides to allow transportation, since they await help from out as everything they had, has been
destroyed due to war. Even the corpses are to be taken away to avoid any kind of epidemic. Overall, in the first stanza poet presents a piteous picture that is sure to speak of the horrors of the war.
And look at the irony, the cameras that had been working non-stop has gone away to some other place where war is likely to happen and there is not even one person left to listen and report the woes of these people. This even brings in light the selfish nature of human beings that want best out of everything and more than human beings we want money and entertainment.
The people who are left are trying their level best to restore what all has been demolished, for instance the bridges and railway station.
Few people have taken the initiative, though, more than cleaning their minds are working on the fact as how it would have been before the war. And we people who are sitting at the far corner find it all the more boring, since we didn’t face the cruelties of the war and are enjoying.
Those who faced the dreadful war, tell others while who know little listen attentively to add more to their knowledge. And there are few people who are lying under the vast sky and are free as they never had to face any war and don’t bother themselves as they have better things to worry about.
“Old order changeth yielding to new” is the best line to describe the whole poem as poetess, says through her poem that end of one thing mark the beginning of another. May it be the bomb attack on the Japanese cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), though it created lot of destruction but at the same time who knows if these cities would haven’t been destroyed then they wouldn’t have attained the shape they’re in today.
But the last thing that I would like to say is- lets pray for those who died in these wars and wish there are no wars in the future.