Anna Swir: I Starve My Belly for a Sublime Purpose

 Three days

I starve my belly

so that it learns

to eat the sun.

I say to it: Belly,

I am ashamed of you. You must

spiritualize yourself. You must

eat the sun.

The belly keeps silent

for three days. It's not easy

to waken in it higher aspirations.

Yet I hope for the best.

This morning, tanning myself on the beach,

I noticed that, little by little,

it begins to shine.

-- translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan