Parting with the view

I don’t reproach the spring for starting up again.
I can’t blame it for doing what it must year after year
I know that my grief will not stop the green.
The grass blade may bend but only in the wind.

It doesn’t pain me to see that the clumps of alders above
The water have something to rustle with again.
I take not of the fact that the shore of a certain lake
Is still - as if you were living - as lovely as before.

I don’t resent the view for its vista of a
Sun-dazed bay. I am even able to imagine
Some non-us sitting at this minute on a fallen trunk.
I respect their right to whisper, laugh and lapse into happy silence.

I can even allow that they are bound by love and
That he holds her with a living arm.
Something freshly birdish starts rustling in the reeds.
I sincerely want them to hear it.

I don’t require changes from the surf,
Now diligent, now sluggish obeying not me.
I expect nothing from the depth near the woods
First emerald, then sapphire then black.

There’s one thing I won’t agree to:
My own return. The privilege of presence -
I give it up. I survived you by enough
And only by enough, to contemplate from afar.

“Parting with a view” ~ Wislawa Szymborska