Wislawa Szymborska

We are bombarded with news of acts of terrorism on a daily basis. Do we stop and think--who are the victims of these random acts?

Here is a poem by Wislawa Szymborska (July 2, 1923 – February 1, 2012), Polish poet, essayist, translator, and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality"

A Terrorist Is Watching

The bomb will go off in the bar at one-twenty.
Now it’s only one-sixteen.
Some will still manage to go in.
Some to go out.

The terrorist has already crossed the street.
At this distance he’s safe,
and has a view like in the movies.

A woman in a yellow jacket—she goes in.
A man in sunglasses—he goes out.
Boys in jeans—they are talking.
One-seventeen and four seconds.
The smaller one is lucky and rides off on a bike,
but the taller one goes in.

One-seventeen and forty seconds.
A young woman, a green ribbon in her hair, is walking.
But a bus suddenly blocks the view.
The young woman is nowhere to be seen.
Was she stupid enough to go in?
We’ll see when they carry them out.

One-nineteen.
Nobody goes in.
Instead, one man, fat and bald, goes out.
But he seems to be looking for something in his pockets
and at one-twenty, less ten seconds,
he goes back for his silly gloves.

It’s one-twenty.
How the time crawls.
Maybe, it’s now.
No, not yet.
Yes, now.
The bomb goes off.

--Wislawa Szymborska

(translated by Austin Flint)

[from “World Poetry: An Anthology Of Verse From Antiquity To Our Time”, Clifton Fadiman, General Editor, W.W. Norton and Company, 1998]