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."

Memories come to mind like excavated statues
that have misplaced their heads.

NIŠTA DVAPUT

Dvaput se ništa ne događa
niti će se dogoditi. Zbog toga
neuvežbani smo se rodili
i nerutinski pomrećemo.

Makar učenici
najgluplji u školi sveta bili,
nijednu zimu ni leto
nećemo ponavljati.

Nijedan dan se neće ponoviti,
dve slične noći ne postoje,
ni dva ista poljupca,
ni dva jednaka pogleda u oči.

Juče, kada ime tvoje
neko kraj mene glasno izgovori,
bi mi kao da ruža
kroz otvoren prozor pade.

Danas, kada smo zajedno,
okrenula sam lice ka zidu.
Ruža? Kako izgleda ruža?
Da li je to cvet? A možda je kamen?

Zbog čega se, trenu crni,
s nepotrebnom zebnjom mešaš?
Postojiš - prema tome moraš proći.
Proći - prema tome to je lepo.

Nasmejani, zagrljeni,
pokušavamo sklad da nađemo,
iako se kao dve kapi čiste vode
razlikujemo.

We've inherited hope — the gift of forgetting.

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as
my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories
fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.

Memory Finally Memory’s finally found what it was after. My mother has turned up, my father has been spotted. I dreamed up a table and two chairs. They sat. They were mine again, alive again for me. The two lamps of their faces gleamed at dusk as if for Rembrandt. Only now can I begin to tell in how many dreams they’ve wandered, in how many crowds I dragged them out from underneath the wheels, in how many deathbeds they moaned with me at their side. Cut off, they grew back, but never straight. The absurdity drove them to disguises. So what if they felt no pain outside me, they still ached within me. In my dreams, gawking crowds heard me call out Mom to a bouncing, chirping thing up on a branch. They made fun of my father’s hair in pigtails. I woke up ashamed. So, finally. One ordinary Friday night they suddenly came back exactly as I wanted. In a dream, but somehow freed from dreams, obeying just themselves and nothing else. In the picture’s background possibilities grew dim, accidents lacked the necessary shape. Only they shone, beautiful because just like themselves. They appeared to me for a long, long, happy time. I woke up. I opened my eyes. I touched the world, a chiseled picture frame.

How should we live? someone asked me in a letter.
I had meant to ask him
the same question.

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"Мъжко стопанство

Той е от тези мъже, дето всичко си вършат самички.
Трябва да го обичаш със все шкафчета и полички.
С онова, което е в тях или навън се подава.
Няма вещ, която съхранение не заслужава.
Чукчета, клещи, длета и свредели, и епруветки,
гвоздеи, шнурчета, дюбели разни, някакви четки,
тубички от лепило, колекция камъни речни,
менгеме и наковалня, бурканче с тайнствена течност,
стар будилник, край него - всичките извадени части,
мъртъв бръмбар в шишенце, флакончета, смазки и пасти,
летвички къси и дълги, уплътнения, кламери,
три пера от водна кокошка от езерото Мамри,
няколко тапи от шампанско, затънали във цимент,
две стъкълца, потъмнели при някакъв експеримент,
плочки, дъсчици и гумички, картончета дребни,
които били са или пък ще бъдат потребни,
ключове цяла дузина, кожа, ръкави от дрешка,
някакви дръжки за нещо, и прашка съвсем момчешка...
Да изхвърлим - попитах - част от богатството прашно?
Този, когото обичам, изгледа ме страшно.

"Męskie gospodarstwo"
превод: Иван Вълев"

Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.

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.

Whose side are you on?" "I don't know." "This is a war, you've got to choose." "I don't know." "Does your village still exist?" "I don't know." "Are those your children?" "Yes.

Gone, lost, scattered to the four winds. It still surprises me how little now remains, one first person sing., temporarily declined in human form, just now making such a fuss about a blue umbrella left yesterday on a bus.

I'm working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.

I don't reproach the spring
for starting up again.
I can't blame it
for doing what it must
year after year.

I know that my grief
will not stop the green.

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