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Wisława Szymborska Biography

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“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.”

SoulWislawa Szymborska
Author:Wisława Szymborska
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“We read the letters of the dead like helpless gods, but gods, nonetheless, since we know the dates that follow. We know which debts will never be repaid. Which widows will remarry with the corpse still warm. Poor dead, blindfolded dead, gullible, fallible, pathetically prudent. We see the faces people make behind their backs. We catch the sound of wills being ripped to shreds. The dead sit before us comically, as if on buttered bread, or frantically pursue the hats blown from their heads. Their bad taste, Napoleon, steam, electricity, their fatal remedies for curable diseases, their foolish apocalypse according to St. John, their counterfeit heaven on earth according to Jean-Jacques… We watch the pawns on their chessboards in silence, even though we see them three squares later. Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different. Or a little bit different – which is to say, completely different. The most fervent of them gaze confidingly into our eyes: their calculations tell them that they’ll find perfection there.”

DeathLettersDeadHindsight
Book:View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems
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“Some People Some people flee some other people. In some country under a sun and some clouds. They abandon something close to all they’ve got, sown fields, some chickens, dogs, mirrors in which fire now preens. Their shoulders bear pitchers and bundles. The emptier they get, the heavier they grow. What happens quietly: someone’s dropping from exhaustion. What happens loudly: someone’s bread is ripped away, someone tries to shake a limp child back to life. Always another wrong road ahead of them, always another wrong bridge across an oddly reddish river. Around them, some gunshots, now nearer, now farther away, above them a plane seems to circle. Some invisibility would come in handy, some grayish stoniness, or, better yet, some nonexistence for a shorter or a longer while. Something else will happen, only where and what. Someone will come at them, only when and who, in how many shapes, with what intentions. If he has a choice, maybe he won’t be the enemy and will leave them to some sort of life.”

LifePoetryOppression
Book:Monologue of a Dog: New Poems
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“We treat each other with exceeding courtesy; we says, it’s great to see you after all these years. Our tigers drink milk. Our hawks tread the ground. Our sharks have all drowned. Our wolves yawn beyond the open cage. 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. We fall silent in mid-sentence, all smiles, past help. Our humans don’t know how to talk to one another.”

HumansPoetryTalkingCommunicationPoemSpeechAnimals
Book:View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems
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“-A Word On Statistics- Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two. Unsure of every step: almost all the rest. Ready to help, if it doesn't take long: forty-nine. Always good, because they cannot be otherwise: fourwell, maybe five. Able to admire without envy: eighteen. Led to error by youth (which passes): sixty, plus or minus. Those not to be messed with: four-and-forty. Living in constant fear of someone or something: seventy-seven. Capable of happiness: twenty-some-odd at most. Harmless alone, turning savage in crowds: more than half, for sure. Cruel when forced by circumstances: it's better not to know, not even approximately. Wise in hindsight: not many more than wise in foresight. Getting nothing out of life except things: thirty (though I would like to be wrong). Balled up in pain and without a flashlight in the dark: eighty-three, sooner or later. Those who are just: quite a few, thirty-five. But if it takes effort to understand: three. Worthy of empathy: ninety-nine. Mortal: one hundred out of one hundred a figure that has never varied yet.”

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Author:Wisława Szymborska
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“There's nothing more debauched than thinking. This sort of wantonness runs wild like a wind-borne weed on a plot laid out for daisies. Nothing's sacred for those who think. Calling things brazenly by name, risque analyses, salacious syntheses, frenzied, rakish chases after the bare facts, the filthy fingering of touchy subjects, discussion in heat--it's music to their ears.”

ThinkingPoetryPoemThought
Book:View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems
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