Wisława Szymborska Quotes

For the sake of research, the big picture and definitive conclusions, one would have to transcend time, in which everything scurries and whirls.

the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

Here we are, naked lovers, beautiful to each other—and that's enough. The leaves of our eyelids our only covers, we're lying amidst deep night.

I am my own obstacle.

Hay tanto de Todo
que lo que hay de Nada queda muy bien cubierto.

I'd have to be really quick to describe clouds — a split second's enough for them to start being something else. <p> Their trademark: they don't repeat a single shape, shade, pose, arrangement.

Nothing has changed.
The body is susceptible to pain,
It must eat and breath air and sleep,
It has thin skin and blood right underneath,
An adequate stock of teeth and nails,
Its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable.
In tortures all this is taken into account.

Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it is shuddered
Before the founding of Rome and after,
In the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are as they were, it’s just the earth that’s grown smaller,
And whatever happens seems on the other side of the wall.

Nothing has changed.
It’s just that there are more people,
Besides the old offenses, new ones have appeared,
Real, imaginary, temporary, and none,
But the howl with which the body responds to them,
Was, and is, and ever will be a howl of innocence
According to the time-honored scale and tonality.

Nothing has changed.
Maybe just the manners, ceremonies, dances,
Yet the movement of the hands in protecting the head is the same.
The body writhes, jerks, and tries to pull away
Its legs give out, it falls, the knees fly up,
It turns blue, swells, salivates, and bleeds.

Nothing has changed.
Except of course for the course of boundaries,
The lines of forests, coasts, deserts, and glaciers.
Amid these landscapes traipses the soul,
Disappears, comes back, draws nearer, moves away,
Alien to itself, elusive
At times certain, at others uncertain of its own existence,
While the body is and is and is
And has no place of its own.

Life on Earth is quite a bargain. Dreams, for one, don’t charge admission. Illusions are costly only when lost.

"-NONREADING-

Bookstores don't provide
a remote control for Proust,
you can't switch
to a soccer match,
or a quiz show, win a Cadillac.

We live longer
but less precisely
and in shorter sentences.

We travel faster, farther, more often,
but bring back slides instead of memories.
Here I am with some guy.
There I guess that's my ex.
Here everyone's naked
so this must be a beach.

Seven volumes — mercy.
Couldn't it be cut or summarized,
or better yet put into pictures.
There was that series called "The Doll,"
but my sister-in-law says that's some other P.*

And by the way, who was he anyway.
They say he wrote in bed for years on end.
Page after page
at a snail's pace.
But we're still going in fifth gear
and, knock on wood, never better."

Merciless song, you leave me with my lone, nonconvertible, unmetamorphic body: I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones. Four A.M. The hour between night and day. The hour between toss and turn. The hour of thirty-year-olds. The hour swept clean for roosters’ crowing. The hour when the earth takes back its warm embrace. The hour of cool drafts from extinguished stars. The hour of do-we-vanish-too-without-a-trace. Empty hour. Hollow. Vain. Rock bottom of all the other hours. No one feels fine at four a.m. If ants feel fine at four a.m., we’re happy for the ants. And let five a.m. come if we’ve got to go on living.

Cierta gente huyendo de otra gente.
En cierto país bajo el sol
y bajo ciertas nubes.

Yes, the memory still moves her. Yes, just a little tired now. Yes, it will pass. You may get up. Thank her. Say good-bye. Leave, passing by the new arrivals in the hall.

Read good poetry and read it well, tracing the countless incarnations of every word. These are after all the same words lying dead in dictionaries or leading a gray life in speech. Then why do they shine like new in poems, as if the poet had just discovered them?

Out of a hundred people:
Those who always know better- 52
Doubting every step- all the rest
Glad to lend a hand if it doesn’t take too long- as high as 49
Always good, because they can’t be otherwise- 4 maybe 5
Able to admire without envy- 18
Living in constant fear of something or someone- 77
Capable of happiness- 20 something tops
Harmless singly, savage in crowds- half at least
Wise after the fact- just a couple more than wise before it
Taking only things from life- 30 (I wish I were wrong)
Righteous- 35, which is a lot
Righteous and understanding- 3
Worthy of compassion- 99
Mortal- 100 out of 100 (Thus far this figure still remains unchanged.)

A Contribution to Statistics

They’ll reenter their lives’ cages, where love’s tiger sometimes rages, but the beast’s too tame to bite. We’ll