Wisława Szymborska

“When it comes, you’ll be dreaming”

“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.”

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

“Toy balloon There are no children here.”

“They were or they weren't. Swallowed them up or it didn't.”

“I'm working on the world, tricks for old dogs.”

“Our snakes have shed their lightning, don't know how to talk to one another.”

“I am too close for him to dream of me. I am too close.”

“My cry could only waken him. And what in many shimmering hues.”

“In Heraclitus' river a fish begs the fish to ease its fishy lot.”

“I, the solitary fish, a fish apart may only be the dark's embarrassed wink.”

“No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part. only its seed, imagination.”

“I knock at the stone's front door. "I don't have a door," says the stone.”

“Our stockpile of antiquity grows constantly, so sentimental, so spacious.”

“I remember it so clearly — no one ever finished it near me.”

“I'm sorry that my voice was hard. They heard me and lowered their eyes.”

“Yes, she loved him very much. Yes, he was born that way. a tape recorder. Yes, she has seen such things.”

“Yes, the memory still moves her. passing by the new arrivals in the hall.”

“Whose side are you on?" "I don't know." "Are those your children?" "Yes.”

“This adult male. This person on earth. This object took three billion years to emerge.”

“He feels like a handle broken off a jug, but the jug doesn't know it's broken and keeps going to the well.”

“Within him, there's awful darkness, in the darkness a small boy. God of humor, do something about him today.”

“I am a tarsier and a tarsier's son, and whatever simply could not be left out...”

“And only we few who remain unstripped of fur, which finds you innocent for now.”

“So he's got to have happiness, did you ever!”

“He's no end of fun, for all you say. A human, if ever we saw one.”

“Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different. Or a little bit different — which is to say, completely different.”

“I believe in the refusal to take part. I believe in the secret taken to the grave.”

“I lost a few goddesses while moving south to north and also some gods while moving east to west.”

“My siblings died the day I left for dry land and only one small bone recalls that anniversary in me.”

“Gone, lost, scattered to the four winds. It still surprises me about a blue umbrella left yesterday on a bus.”

“My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs. My apologies to great questions for small answers.”

“I know I won't be justified as long as I live, then labor heavily so that they may seem light.”

“My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.”

“My dreams — even they're not as populous as they should be. They hold more solitude than noisy crowds.”

“And how can we talk of order overall Only what is human can truly be foreign.”

“I felt age within me. Distance. was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.”

“The going's rough, and so we need the laugh for faces to show ordinary sorrow.”

“On this third planet from the sun a clear conscience is Number One.”

“”

“Millennia have passed and I'll tell you who you were.”

“Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.”

“Show me your little poem smell of burning.”

“We call it a grain of sand incorrect or apt.”

“The window has a wonderful view of a lake, soundless, odorless, and painless.”

“There's no life As far as you've come can't be undone.”

“He managed to come into the world at what was still a fitting time. that student field trips rarely reach.”

“Few of them made it to thirty. before the first snow.”

“And who's this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe? That's tiny baby Adolf, the Hitlers' little boy!”

“God was finally going to believe are still two different men.”

“There's nothing more debauched than thinking.”

“It's shocking, the positions, Such positions the Kama Sutra itself doesn't know.”

“After every war can get by.”

“Those who knew And at last nothing less than nothing.”

“Something doesn't start and stubbornly stays disappeared.”

“I shake my memory. Nothing less than one whole second.”

“If there are angels since all of this takes place in silence.”

“Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan. give up my life for my life.”

“When it comes, you’ll be dreaming”

“We're extremely fortunate than the world itself.”

“For the sake of research, in which everything scurries and whirls.”

“The counting of weekdays a symptom of lunacy.”

“I'd have to be really quick shape, shade, pose, arrangement.”

“They aren't obliged to vanish when we're gone. They don't have to be seen while sailing on.”

“True love. Is it normal”