Wisława Szymborska Quotes

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

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.

هردو بر اين باورند
كه حسي ناگهاني آنها را به هم پيوند داده.
چنين اطميناني زيباست،
اما ترديد زيبا تر است.

چون قبلا همديگر را نمي شناختند،
گمان مي بردند هرگز چيزي ميان آنها نبوده.
اما نظر خيابان ها، پله ها و راهروهايي

كه آن دو مي توانسته اند از سال ها پيش
از كنار هم گذشته باشند، در اين باره چيست؟

دوست داشتم از آنها بپرسم

آيا به ياد نمي آورند
شايد درون دري چرخان
زماني روبروي هم؟
يك ببخشيد در ازدحام مردم؟
يك صداي اشتباه گرفته ايد در گوشي تلفن؟

- ولي پاسخشان را مي دانم.
- نه، چيزي به ياد نمي آورند.

بسيار شگفت زده مي شدند
اگر مي دانستند، كه ديگر مدت هاست
بازيچه اي در دست اتفاق بوده اند.

هنوز كاملا آماده نشده
كه براي آنها تبديل به سرنوشتي شود،
آنها را به هم نزديك مي كرد دور مي كرد،

جلو راهشان را مي گرفت
و خنده ي شيطانيش را فرو مي خورد و
كنار مي جهيد.

علائم و نشانه هايي بوده
هر چند ناخوانا.
شايد سه سال پيش
يا سه شنبه ي گذشته
برگ درختي از شانه ي يكيشان
به شانه ي ديگري پرواز كرده؟

چيزي بوده كه يكي آن را گم كرده
ديگري آن را يافته و برداشته.

از كجا معلوم توپي در بوته هاي كودكي نبوده باشد؟
دستگيره ها و زنگ درهايي بوده
كه يكيشان لمس كرده و در فاصله اي كوتاه آن ديگري.
چمدان هايي كنار هم در انبار.
شايد يك شب هر دو يك خواب را ديده باشند،
كه بلافاصله بعد از بيدار شدن محو شده.

بالاخره هر آغازي
فقط ادامه ايست
و كتاب حوادث
هميشه از نيمه ي آن باز مي شود.

My apologies to past loves for treating the latest as the first.

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.

A Note

Life is the only way
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on the sand,
rise on wings;

to be a dog,
or stroke its warm fur;

to tell pain
from everything it's not;

to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to seek the least of all possible mistakes.

An extraordinary chance
to remember for a moment
a conversation held
with the lamp switched off;

and if only once
to stumble upon a stone,
end up soaked in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass;
and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;
and to keep on not knowing
something important.

We're extremely fortunate not to know precisely the kind of world we live in. One would have to live a long, long time, unquestionably longer than the world itself.

I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.

Four billion people on this earth,
but my imagination is the way it's always been:
bad with large numbers.
It is still moved by particularity.
It flits about the darkness like a flashlight beam,
disclosing only random faces,
while the rest go blindly by,
unthought of, unpitied.
Not even a Dante could have stopped that.
So what do you do when you're not,
even with all the muses on your side?

Non omnis moriar — a premature worry.
Yet am I fully alive, and is that enough?
It never has been, and even less so now.
I select by rejecting, for there's no other way,
but what I reject, is more numerous,
more dense, more intrusive than ever.
At the cost of untold losses — a poem, a sigh.
I reply with a whisper to a thunderous calling.
How much I am silent about I can't say.
A mouse at the foot of mother mountain.
Life lasts as long as a few lines of claws in the sand.

My dreams — even they are not as populous as they should be.
There is more solitude in them than crowds or clamor.
Sometimes someone long dead will drop by for a bit.
A single hand turns a knob.
Annexes of echo overgrow the empty house.
I run from the threshold down into the quiet
valley seemingly no one's — an anachronism by now.

Where does all this space still in me come from — that I don't know.

I remember it so clearly — how people, seeing me, would break off in midword. Laughter died. Lovers' hands unclasped. Children ran to their mothers. I didn't even know their short-lived names. And that song about a little green leaf — no one ever finished it near me.

Our snakes have shed their lightning, our apes their flights of fancy, our peacocks have renounced their plumes. The bats flew out of our hair long ago.<p> We fall silent in mid-sentence, all smiles, past help. Our humans don't know how to talk to one another.

...They'd be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.

Not quite ready yet
To become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.

There were signs and signals,

Even if they couldn't read them yet.
Perhaps three years ago
or just last Tuesday
a certain leaf fluttered
from one shoulder to another?
Something was dropped and then picked up.
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished into childhood's thicket?

There were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.
Suitcases checked and standing side by side.
One night, perhaps, the same dream,
grown hazy by morning.

Every beginning
Is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.

There's no life that couldn't be immortal if only for a moment.<p>Death always arrives by that very moment too late.<p>In vain it tugs at the knob of the invisible door. As far as you've come can't be undone.

Every menu is an obituary.

Funny little thing. How could she know that even despair can work for you if you’re lucky enough to outlive it. I’d