Seen from above
A dead beetle lies on the path through the field. Three pairs of legs folded neatly on its belly. Instead of death’s confusion, tidiness and order. The horror of this sight is moderate, its scope is strictly local, from the wheat grass to the mint. The grief is quarantined. The sky is blue.
To preserve our peace of mind, animals die more shallowly: they aren’t deceased, they’re dead. They leave behind, we’d like to think, less feeling and less world, departing, we suppose, from a stage less tragic. Their meek souls never haunt us in the dark, they know their place, they show respect.
And so the dead beetle on the path lies unmourned and shining in the sun. One glance at it will do for meditation – clearly nothing much has happened to it. Important matters are reserved for us, for our life and our death, a death that always claims the right of way.
- Wislawa Szymborska, Poems New and Selected 1957-1997. Translation by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak
