Washing a shirt

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From the pain of lost love and the pain of exile, to the pain of bereavement, which is considered the summum of all losses, an idea I think debatable. It’s no more permanent that losing a love; no more complete than losing one’s homeland. And unlike those two, when a person dies, we don’t have to suffer the additional pain of knowing they exist somewhere, and are prospering without us.

The poem is by Anna Swirszczynska (1909-1984), who has been translated by Jo Govaerts, about whom I spoke yesterday. I took Jo’s translation into Dutch, and translated it in turn into English. Don’t panic, it’s how a lot of translation is done.

The poem not only penetrates right to the heart of what missing a loved one comes down to (a fugitive odour), it also acts as a counterpoint to the usual view that a man may live on in his works. Not, it appears, for everyone.

Stupidly, I never thought to see if an English translation already existed, which it does, here, by the distinguished poet and translator Czeslaw Milosz (with Leonard Nathan).

Sorry, but I think my version is better, for a couple of reasons. You may not agree.

I’m washing a shirt

For the last time, I’m washing the shirt
of my dead father.
The shirt smells of sweat. I remember
that sweat from when I was a child;
all those years
I washed his shirts and underwear
and dried them
on the iron stove in his studio.
He put them on unironed.

Of all the bodies in all the world,
of animals and men,
only one gives off this sweat.
I breathe it in
for the last time. By washing this shirt
I’m destroying it
for good.

Now
all that remains of him are his paintings,
which smell of paint.

Anna Swirszczynska (1909 - 1984)