The End and the Beginning

1. Read the poem aloud as a class, paying special attention to each time Szymborska uses the phrase “someone has to.” Then, for each repeated phrase of “someone has to” create a small group of students (about 5 groups in total). Each of the groups will be assigned a task that “someone has to” do from the poem (for example, “someone has to clean up,” Line 2; “someone has to push the rubble,” Line 5, etc.). Think deeply about your group’s assigned task in the aftermath of war and discuss how you feel about being the person or group to complete it. If group members are comfortable, stand up and act out the task to better imagine how it might feel physically.

Afterwards, come together with the larger group to share how your group felt about the tasks they were assigned. Spend some time as a class exploring these feelings and connecting them to the larger message and meaning of the poem and the concept of reconstruction.

2. In Ilya Kaminsky’s 2013 poem “We Lived Happily During the War,” he describes the American front of warfare as one of distance, ambivalence, and, ironically, happiness. The poem stands in contrast to Szymborska’s “The End and the Beginning”—a poem that occupies the epicenter of a great war and its ruins. Both poems, however, offer important insights into what it means to exist during or after a war. In this activity, draft your own “war” poem. The “war” doesn’t have to be large or political; “war” can occur in many ways. For example, it can be a war on the environment, a war on race, a war on one’s neighborhood, or a war on one’s way of living or beliefs. Whatever topic your “war” the poem involves, allow the word choice and tone to connect with your world concept and/or placement in society.