“We smoke the last cigarette and drank the last coffee,” said Michal Rusinek this morning,when asked about if he had a chance to say goodbye to Wislawa Szymborska.

A Polish poet and the Nobel Prize Winner died yesterday evening in Krakow at the age of 88. Michal Rusinek has been a private secretary of  the poetess since her Nobel Prize created  a commotion in her life in 1996.

The Nobel Committee referred to her as “Mozart of Poetry" who combined the elegance of the language with "the fury of Beethoven." Swedish papers called her “Greta Garbo of World Poetry,” but    Szymborska herself  defied labels and distinctions. Last year, when accepting the highest Polish honor: the Order of  the White Eagle she said: This is puzzling me. I am standing here with people who do  what they love doing and for that they give us medals.

A non-linear intellect and a breeze of fresh air, Wislawa Szymborska was  a rare gem. She combined wit, wisdom and warmth in such a way that before we realized the life lesson in progress, we laughed it off with her inside joke, a twist to an obvious, or a concrete solution to an abstract problem. She was a virtuoso of the language, which, by the way, we understand without a help of a thesaurus.  With all of that in store, growing  popularity, and  a Nobel Prize sticker on her books  she still had managed to maintain her artistic integrity and never gave up on who she was. And we,  her readers,  in return kept reading what she had to say.

Teenager

"Me --- a teenager?

If she suddenly stood, here, now, before me,

would I need to treat her as near and dear,

although she's strange to me, and distant?

Shed a tear, kiss her brow

for the simple reason

that we share a birthdate?

So many dissimilarities between us

that only the bones are likely still the same,

the cranial vault, the eye sockets.

Since her eyes seem a little larger,

her eyelashes are longer, she's taller,

and the whole body is tightly sheathed

in smooth, unblemished skin.

Relatives and friends still link us, it is true,

but in her world nearly all are living,

while in mine almost no one survives

from the shared circle. 

We differ so profoundly,

talk and think about completely different things.

She knows next to nothing ---

but with a dogeddness deserving better causes.

I know much more ---

but not for sure."

Famously private and loudly reticent, Szymborska quipped: “ Interview is the least favorite of my literary genres. “  She gave them reluctantly, for special people, and on special occasions.

What she enjoyed most was a privacy of her home, and a group of good friends with whom she played a purnonsense games of words. Her favourite genre being a limerick. She made collages out of  newspaper cut-outs that  she sent, instead of greeting cards, to friends and acquaintences. One of the receipients was Woody Allen, who said: This means more to me than the golden statuettes they give in Hollywood.

Death was a subject Szymborska tackled with a  gusto .

 Epitaph

“Here lies, oldfashioned as parentheses,

The authoress of verse. Eternal rest

Was granted her by earth, although the corpse

Had failed to join the avant-garde, of course.

The plain grave? There’s poetic justice in it,

This ditty-dirge, the owl, the meek cornflower.

Passerby, take your PC out, press “POWER"

think on Szymborska's fate for half a minute.

Funeral (excerpts)

“So suddenly who could have seen it coming”

“stress and smoking, I kept telling him”

“not bad, thanks,  and you”

(…) “ it all sounded so much more solemn in Latin”

(…) “I could sure use a drink”

 “give me a call”

“which bus goes downtown”

“I’m going this way”

"and we over there.”

Szymborska, a life-long smoker  herself, was often captured with  her signature smoke. When asked about the habit, she said: Have you ever seen anything good written by a non-smoker?

She was writing to the last minute, and we are yet to see her playfulness. But for now, we are left with  the ultimate of Szymborska’s death, and the world with her poetry but without her comforting. presence. And all I can think of is:“ Die --you can't do that to a cat.”