Wisława Szymborska

Wisława Szymborska-Włodek (2 July 1923 – 1 February 2012) was a Polish poet, essayist and translator. She was awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was bestowed the title of Lady of the Order of the White Eagle in 2011. She was a member of the Polish Writers Association (1989) and the Polish Academy of Skills (1995).

The Poet and the World (1996)

 * Nobel lecture (7 December 1996)




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


 * Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself.


 * 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."


 * Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.


 * "There's nothing new under the sun": that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun. And the poem you created is also new under the sun, since no one wrote it down before you. And all your readers are also new under the sun, since those who lived before you couldn't read your poem. And that cypress under which you're sitting hasn't been growing since the dawn of time. It came into being by way of another cypress similar to yours, but not exactly the same.


 * The world — whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we've just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don't know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we've got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world — it is astonishing.

It looks like poets will always have their work cut out for them.
 * Granted, in daily speech, where we don't stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like "the ordinary world," "ordinary life," "the ordinary course of events"… 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. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.

Poems New and Collected (1998)

 * Translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh, Harcourt Inc., ISBN 0-15-601146-8

Calling Out to Yeti (1957)


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


 * Openess

once kidnapped by the wind — come home, and I will say: There are no children here.'''
 * '''Toy balloon
 * "Still Life with a Balloon"

On an island or not. An ocean or not an ocean Swallowed them up or it didn't.
 * They were or they weren't.
 * "Atlantis"

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

Salt (1962)


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

I don't flutter over him, don't flee him beneath the roots of trees. I am too close. The caught fish doesn't sing with my voice. The ring doesn't roll from my finger. I am too close.
 * I am too close for him to dream of me.
 * "I Am Too Close..."

a poor gift: I, confined to my own form, when I used to be a birch, a lizard shedding times and satin skins in many shimmering hues.
 * My cry could only waken him. And what
 * "I Am Too Close..."

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.
 * '''In Heraclitus' river
 * "In Heraclitus' River"

(apart at least from the tree fish and the stone fish), write, at isolated moments, a tiny fish or two whose glittering scales, so fleeting, may only be the dark's embarrassed wink.
 * I, the solitary fish, a fish apart
 * "In Heraclitus' River"

'''Even sight heightened to become all-seeing will do you no good without a sense of taking part.''' You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what the sense should be, only its seed, imagination.'''
 * No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.
 * "Conversation with a Stone".

"It's only me, let me come in." "I don't have a door," says the stone.
 * I knock at the stone's front door.
 * "Conversation with a Stone"

No End of Fun (1967)


So he was born, too. Born like everyone else. Like me, who will die. The son of an actual woman. A new arrival from the body's depths. A voyager to Omega.
 * Born.
 * "Born"

it's overflowing, reckless squatters jostle for a place in history, hordes of sword fodder, Hector's nameless extras, no less brave than he, thousands upon thousands of singular faces, each the first and last for all time, in each a pair of inimitable eyes. How easy it was to live not knowing this, so sentimental, so spacious.
 * Our stockpile of antiquity grows constantly,
 * "Census"

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.
 * '''I remember it so clearly —
 * "Soliloquy for Cassandra"

Look down on yourselves from the stars, I cried, look down on yourselves from the stars. They heard me and lowered their eyes.
 * I'm sorry that my voice was hard.
 * "Soliloquy for Cassandra"

Yes, she was standing by the prison wall that morning. Yes, she heard the shots. You may regret not having brought a camera, a tape recorder. Yes, she has seen such things.
 * Yes, she loved him very much. Yes, he was born that way.
 * "Pietà"

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.
 * Yes, the memory still moves her.
 * "Pietà"

"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."
 * "Whose side are you on?" "I don't know."
 * "Vietnam"

Ten billion nerve cells. Ten pints of blood pumped by ten ounces of heart. This object took three billion years to emerge.
 * This adult male. This person on earth.
 * "A Film from the Sixties"

but the jug doesn't know it's broken and keeps going to the well.
 * He feels like a handle broken off a jug,
 * "A Film from the Sixties"

God of humor, do something about him today.
 * Within him, there's awful darkness, in the darkness a small boy. God of humor, do something about him, OK?
 * "A Film from the Sixties"

the grandson and great-grandson of tarsiers''', a tiny creature, made up of two pupils and whatever simply could not be left out...
 * '''I am a tarsier and a tarsier's son,
 * "Tarsier"

untorn from bone, unplucked of soaring feathers, esteemed in all our quills, scales, tusks, and horns, and in whatever else that ingenious protein has seen fit to clothe us with, '''we, my lord, are your dream, which finds you innocent for now.'''
 * And only we few who remain unstripped of fur,
 * "Tarsier"

he's got to have truth, too, he's got to have eternity — did you ever!
 * So he's got to have happiness,
 * "No End of Fun"

only just realized that he is he; only just whittled with his hand né fin a flint, a rocket ship; easily drowned in the ocean's teaspoon, not even funny enough to tickle the void: sees only with his eyes; hears only with his ears; his speech's personal best is the conditional; he uses his reason to pick holes in reason. In short, he's next to to one, but his head's full of freedom, omniscience and the Being beyond his foolish meat — did you ever!
 * He has only just learned to tell dreams from waking;
 * "No End of Fun"

Poor little beggar. A human, if ever we saw one.
 * He's no end of fun, for all you say.
 * "No End of Fun"

Could Have (1972)


Or a little bit different — which is to say, completely different.'''
 * '''Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different.
 * "The Letters of the Dead"

I believe in the ruined career. I believe in the wasted years of work. I believe in the secret taken to the grave.
 * I believe in the refusal to take part.
 * "Discovery"

and also some gods while moving east to west.'''
 * '''I lost a few goddesses while moving south to north
 * "A Speech at the Lost-and-Found".

and only one small bone recalls that anniversary in me.
 * My siblings died the day I left for dry land
 * "A Speech at the Lost-and-Found"

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.
 * '''Gone, lost, scattered to the four winds. It still surprises me
 * "A Speech at the Lost-and-Found"

My apologies to great questions for small answers.
 * My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
 * "Under One Small Star"

since I myself stand in my own way. '''Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words, then labor heavily so that they may seem light.'''
 * I know I won't be justified as long as I live,
 * "Under One Small Star"

A Large Number (1976)


but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.
 * My choices are rejections, since there is no other way,
 * "A Large Number"

They hold more solitude than noisy crowds.
 * My dreams — even they're not as populous as they should be.
 * "A Large Number"

when the very placement of the stars leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?''' Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting! And dust blowing all over the steppes as if they hadn't been partitioned! And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves, that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters! Only what is human can truly be foreign.
 * '''And how can we talk of order overall
 * "Psalm"

The futility of wandering. Torpor.''' I looked back setting my bundle down. I looked back not knowing where to set my foot. Serpents appeared on my path, spiders, field mice, baby vultures. '''They were neither good nor evil now — every living thing was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.'''
 * '''I felt age within me. Distance.
 * "Lot's Wife"

of bright incisors, molars of goodwill. '''Our times are still not safe and sane enough for faces to show ordinary sorrow.'''
 * The going's rough, and so we need the laugh
 * "Smiles"

among the signs of bestiality a clear conscience is Number One.
 * On this third planet from the sun
 * "In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself"

The People on the Bridge (1986)


since you first called me archaeology. '''I no longer require your stone gods, your ruins with legible inscriptions.''' Show me your whatever and I'll tell you who you were.
 * Millennia have passed
 * "Archeology"

Doubts and intentions come to light.'''
 * '''Secret codes resound.
 * "Archeology"

and I'll tell you why it wasn't written any earlier or later than it was. Oh no, you've got me wrong. Keep your funny piece of paper with its scribbles. All I need for my ends is your layer of dirt and the long gone smell of burning.
 * Show me your little poem
 * "Archeology"

but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.''' It does just fine without a name, whether general, particular, permanent, passing, incorrect or apt.
 * '''We call it a grain of sand
 * "View with a Grain of Sand"

but the view doesn't view itself.''' It exists in this world colorless, shapeless, soundless, odorless, and painless.
 * '''The window has a wonderful view of a lake,
 * "View with a Grain of Sand"

that couldn't be immortal if only for a moment.''' Death always arrives by that very moment too late. In vain it tugs at the knob of the invisible door. As far as you've come can't be undone.
 * '''There's no life
 * "On Death, Without Exaggeration"

All that was to pass passed in this house. Not in housing projects, not in furnished but empty quarters, among unknown neighbors on fifteenth floors that student field trips rarely reach.
 * He managed to come into the world at what was still a fitting time.
 * "The Great Man's House"

Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.''' Childhood ended as fast as wolf cubs grow. One had to hurry, to get on with life before the sun went down, before the first snow.
 * '''Few of them made it to thirty.
 * "Our Ancestors' Short Lives"

That's tiny baby Adolf, the Hitlers' little boy!
 * And who's this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe?
 * "Hitler's First Photograph"

in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men.'''
 * '''God was finally going to believe
 * "Our Century's Decline"


 * There's nothing more debauched than thinking.
 * "An Opinion Concerning the Question of Pornography"

the unchecked simplicity with which one mind contrives to fertilize another! Such positions the Kama Sutra itself doesn't know.
 * It's shocking, the positions,
 * "An Opinion Concerning the Question of Pornography"

The End and the Beginning (1993)


someone has to tidy up.''' Things won't pick themselves up, after all. Someone has to shove the rubble to the roadsides so the carts loaded with corpses can get by.
 * '''After every war
 * "The End and the Beginning"

what this was all about must make way for those who know little.''' And less than that. And at last nothing less than nothing.
 * '''Those who knew
 * "The End and the Beginning"

at its usual time. Something doesn't happen as it should.''' Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared.
 * '''Something doesn't start
 * "Cat in an Empty Apartment"

Maybe something in its branches that has been asleep for years will start up with a flutter. No. Clearly I'm asking too much. Nothing less than one whole second.
 * I shake my memory.
 * "May 16, 1973"

they must, I hope, find this convincing, this merriment dangling from terror, not even crying Save me Save me since all of this takes place in silence.
 * If there are angels
 * "Slapstick"

I'm drowning in debts up to my ears. I'll have to pay for myself with my self, give up my life for my life.
 * Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan.
 * "Nothing's a Gift"

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.
 * We're extremely fortunate
 * "We're Extremely Fortunate"

the big picture and definitive conclusions, one would have to transcend time, in which everything scurries and whirls.'''
 * '''For the sake of research,
 * "We're Extremely Fortunate"

would inevitably seem to be a senseless activity; dropping letters in the mailbox a whim of foolish youth; the sign "No Walking On The Grass" a symptom of lunacy.
 * The counting of weekdays
 * "We're Extremely Fortunate"

New Poems 1993 - 97


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

They don't have to be seen while sailing on.'''
 * '''They aren't obliged to vanish when we're gone.
 * "Clouds"