Room for All - Óndra Łysohorsky

I am a river.

From my source the gathering waters have been flowing

since time began

towards the ocean.

I accept brooks

that once were clear

and now disgusting city-sewers.

There is room for all.

I am and I become.

For thousands of years I have been the same

and every moment I become another.

Into my source stream other sources,

into my mouth thunders the sea,

and in between I flow in constant motion.

There is room for all.

In me are whirlpools

that have dragged hundreds to the bottom.

Thousands have thrown themselves into me from bridges,

and not all of them were found;

not every silenced desperation was recovered from me.

There is room for all. Room for all.

In me fish live and fight,

gulls,

madly rapacious,

cast their dauntless shadows over me,

and the black tug-boats

and the white luxury-steamers;

willows on islands bend over me

with whispers of love

that sound the same through all the centuries,

in different tongues,

in difiierent disguises.

There is room for all. Room for all.

I saw the forts of the Roman Empire rising on the hills,

I saw the cathedrals rising, hidden behind their scaffolding,

I see the modern Babel-buildings, shooting up into the clouds,

I see the radio-aerials, taut as for tight-rope walkers,

I see the Television Towers, their red lights reflected in me.

There is room for all. Room for all.

Hundreds of wars have I seen, and millions of warriors,

led, clad, weaponed differently in every century,

but always spilling the same blood.

In my mirror-

how short the distance

from arrow and spear

to atomic war-head.

There is room for all. Room for all.

What do the hills around me

and the sky above me still harbor?

I hear the people on both my banks.

They build no bridges for reconciliation,

they build their bridges in order to destroy each other,

they make speeches that terrify

even me,

the grey river.

I should like to run away,

but I must flow,

but I must hear,

but I must see,

from the source to the ocean,

for in me there is

room for all..

---

Óndra Łysohorsky [real name Ervín Goj] (1905 - 1989) Czech Republic

Translated by Isabella Levatin and W.H. Auden

Source: Poetry August-September 1970 [Poetry Foundation]