"View With A Grain of Sand" by Wislawa Szymborska
We call it a grain of sand but it calls itself neither grain nor sand. It does just fine without a name, whether general, particular, permanent, passing, incorrect or apt. Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it. It doesn’t feel itself seen or touched. And that it fell on the windowsill is only our experience, not its. For it is no different than falling on anything else with no assurance that it’s finished falling or that it’s falling still. The window has a wonderful view of a lake but the view doesn’t view itself. It exists in this world colorless, shapeless, soundless, odorless, and painless. The lakes floor exists floorlessly and its shore exists shorelessly. Its water feels itself neither wet nor dry and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural. They splash deaf to their own noise on pebbles neither large nor small. And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless in which the sun sets without setting at all and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud. Th...