Wisława Szymborska Quotes

شكراً لك يا قلبي/ لأنني استيقظتُ من جديد/ ولو أنّ اليوم هو الأحد/ يوم الراحة/ إلا أن تحت الضلوع/ تتواصل الحركة المعتادة لما قبل العيد

Ningún día se repite,
ni dos noches son iguales,
ni dos besos parecidos
ni dos citas similares.

We've inherited hope — the gift of forgetting.

They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.

"I have no idea who dreamed up the idiotic notion that summer vacations require "light" reading. Just the opposite, since the "light" books get read — if any reading's done at all — before bedtime, after the office work and house work, when we lack the concentration required for heavier fare."

Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.

LA ESTACIÓN DE FERROCARRIL.

Mi no llegada a la ciudad de N
tuvo lugar puntualmente.

Fuiste avisado
con una carta no enviada.

Lograste no llegar
a la hora prevista.

El tren llegó al andén número tres.
Bajó mucha gente.

Entre la muchedumbre se dirigió a la salida
la ausencia de mi persona.

Varias mujeres me sustituyeron
rápidamente
en aquella prisa.

A una de ellas se acercó corriendo
alguien desconocido para mí
pero ella lo reconoció
al instante.

Ambos intercambiaron
un beso no nuestro,
durante el cual se perdió
no mi maleta.

La estación de la ciudad de N
pasó bien el examen
de la existencia objetiva.

La totalidad estaba en su lugar.
Los detalles se movían
por las vías marcadas.

Tuvo lugar incluso
la cita acordada.

Fuera del alcance
de nuestra presencia.

En el paraíso perdido
de la posibilidad.

En otra parte.
En otra parte.
Como suenan estas palabras.

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

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Naš jedini susret, posle mnogo godina,
bio je razgovor dveju stolica
za hladnim stočićem.

Vislava Šimborska, Prva ljubav

SENKA

Moja senka kao dvorska luda za kraljicom.
Kad kraljica sa stolice ustane,
luda se na zidu nakostreši
i u plafon glupom glavom udari.

Što može u dvodimenzionalnom svetu
na svoj način boli.
Možda je ludi na mom dvoru loše
i sebe bi u drugoj ulozi volela.

Kraljica će se kroz prozor nagnuti,
a luda s prozora dole skočiti.
Svaku aktivnost su podelile,
ali ne na pola.

Onaj prostak na sebe uzeo gestove,
patos i svu njegovu bestidnost,
to je sve, za šta snage nemam– za krunu, žezlo, kraljevski plašt.

Biću, ah, laka u pokretima ramena,
ah, laka u okretanju glave,
kralju, pri našem oproštaju,
kralju, na železničkoj stanici.

Kralju, u to vreme luda će,
kralju, leći na železničke šine.

Most of the earth's inhabitants work to get by. They work because they have to. They didn't pick this or that occupation out of passion; the circumstances of their lives did the choosing for them.

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.

Why there's still all this space inside me
I don't know.

Every menu is an obituary.

So how do you
suddenly lose the habit
of yourself?
of day follows night?
of the snows of yesteryear?
of rosy apples?
of the yearning for love,
which is never enough?

from “Moment of Silence