"Maybe all this
is happening in some lab?
Under one lamp by day
and billions by night?
Maybe we're experimental generations?
Poured from one vial to the next,
shaken in test tubes,
not scrutinized by eyes alone,
each of us separately
plucked up by tweezers in the end?
Or maybe it's more like this:
No interference?
The changes occur on their own
according to plan?
The graph's needle slowly etches
its predictable zigzags?
Maybe thus far we aren't of much interest?
The control monitors aren't usually plugged in?
Only for wars, preferably large ones,
for the odd ascent above our clump of Earth,
for major migrations from point A to B?
Maybe just the opposite:
They've got a taste for trivia up there?
Look! On the big screen a little girl
is sewing a button on her sleeve.
The radar shrieks,
the staff come running.
What a darling little being
with its tiny heart beating inside it!
How sweet, its solemn
threading of the needle!
Someone cries enraptured;
Get the boss,
tell her she's got to see this for herself!"
Maybe All This by Wislaw Szymborska
translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
Ermistral Charles (Thialy)
Chris Cran
Niall McClelland
Harold Klunder
Margaux Smith
Marian Dale Scott
Artist Unknown
