Ryszard Kapuściński

Lapidarium

(A Selection)

Translated by Andrzej Duszenko

L

Lapidarium
is a place (a city square,
a castle courtyard, a patio in a museum)
containing a collection of stones, pieces of sculpture
and fragments of buildings — here a bit of a torso or a hand,
there a piece of a cornice or a column, in a word, parts of a nonexistent
(already,  still,  ever)  whole and posing the problem of what to do with them.

Maybe they will remain as testimony of the past, as a trace of trials, as signs? Or maybe in our world, already so grown out, so enormous, and also ever more chaotic and difficult to grasp, to order, everything moves toward a great collage,  toward a loose collection of fragments,  and so — toward  lapidarium?