In London, I remember the indignation.
Surely the Nobel prize should have gone
to Zbigniew Herbert, the Polish poet we loved
– dissident, charismatic, much translated –
not some woman we had barely heard of?
I thought Polish poems should resemble films of Wajda,
charged with the electricity of war.
Szymborska’s poetry held no such glamour.
She had not played a part in the Resistance.
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