Wisława Szymborska Quotes

Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners — I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."

We live longer
but less precisely
and in shorter sentences.

Woods disguised as woods alive without end, and above them birds in flight play birds in flight.

In Heraclitus' river a fish has imagined the fish of all fish, a fish kneels to the fish, a fish sings to the fish, a fish begs the fish to ease its fishy lot.

I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.

The Three Oddest Words

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.

Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.

But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it.

A che serve qui chiedersi
sotto quante stelle nasce l'uomo,
e sotto quante dopo un attimo muore.

My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs. My apologies to great questions for small answers.

Dying - you can't do that to a cat.

So what can they tell us, the writers of dream books,
the scholars of oneiric signs and omens,
the doctors with couches for analyses — if anything fits,
it’s accidental,
and for one reason only,
that in our dreamings,
in their shadowings and gleamings,
in their multiplings, inconceivablings,
in their haphazardings and widescatterings
at times even a clear-cut meaning
may slip through.

I let myself be invented, modeled on my own reflection in his eyes. I dance, dance, dance in the stir of sudden wings.

It turns out I was right.
But nothing has come of it.

We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

It’s picky:
it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow
aren’t two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.

We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.

Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from
or when it’s taking off again,
though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.