One Rainy Morning

Memories come back whenever the morning feels so misty and cool. I am having a comfortable and easy morning today, the kind where you just want to get a book and curl up in your bed. I am reminded of those childish dreams that we all want to come true forever, a hard bound book of my favorite author under the Christmas tree, waking up with boxes of chocolates at the foot of my bed, a warm cup of creamy chocolate while it's drizzling outside, different color sets of pens and diaries as a birthday gift or maybe the scent of freshly picked flowers at the living room mixing with the aroma of mom's newly baked macaroni pasta in tomatoes and rosemary. Mmmm, heaven! 

Now aside from the above mentioned pleasures, please let me share you one of the finest poems that I ever read. It was also adapted into movie, Turn Left, Turn Right. 

Love at First Sight

by Wislawa Szymborska

Both are convinced
that a sudden surge of emotion bound them together.
Beautiful is such a certainty,
but uncertainty is more beautiful.


Because they didn't know each other earlier, they suppose that
nothing was happening between them.
What of the streets, stairways and corridors
where they could have passed each other long ago?


I'd like to ask them
whether they remember-- perhaps in a revolving door
ever being face to face?
an "excuse me" in a crowd
or a voice "wrong number" in the receiver.
But I know their answer:
no, they don't remember.


They'd be greatly astonished
to learn that for a long time
chance had been playing with them.


Not yet wholly ready
to transform into fate for them
it approached them, then backed off,
stood in their way
and, suppressing a giggle,
jumped to the side.


There were signs, signals:
but what of it if they were illegible.
Perhaps three years ago,
or last Tuesday
did a certain leaflet fly
from shoulder to shoulder?
There was something lost and picked up.
Who knows but what it was a ball
in the bushes of childhood.


There were doorknobs and bells
on which earlier
touch piled on touch.
Bags beside each other in the luggage room.
Perhaps they had the same dream on a certain night,
suddenly erased after waking.


Every beginning
is but a continuation,
and the book of events
is never more than half open.

-translated by Walter Whipple