Everything’s mine but just on loan,
nothing for the memory to hold,
though mine as long as I look.
Wisława Szymborska, “Travel Elegy,” Poems New and Collected 1957-1997
The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.
Wisława Szymborska, from “The Joy of Writing,” Poems New and Collected: 1957 - 1997
Why there's still all this space inside me
I don't know.
Wisława Szymborska, from “A Large Number,” Poems New and Collected: 1957 -1997
A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.
Wisława Szymborska, from “A Large Number,” Poems New and Collected: 1957 - 1997
But am I entirely alive and is that enough.
Wisława Szymborska, from “A Large Number,” Poems New and Collected: 1957 - 1997
how can it be that whatever exists
can only exist in one way,
an awful situation, for there's no escaping yourself,
no pause, no transformation?
Wisława Szymborska, from “Interview with a Child,” Poems New and Collected: 1957 - 1997
I won't catch what is distant; what's too close, I'll mix up.
While trying to plumb what the void's inner sense is --
Wisława Szymborska, from “Birthday,” Poems New and Collected: 1957 - 1997
Why after all this one and not the rest?
Why this specific self, not in a nest,
but a house? Sewn up not in scales, but skin?
Not topped off by a leaf, but by a face?
In spite of years of my not being here?
In spite of seas and of all these dates and fates,
these cells, these celestials, and coelenterates?
What is it really that made me appear
neither an inch nor half a globe too far,
neither a minute nor aeons too early?
What made me fill myself with me so squarely?
Why am I starring now into the dark
and muttering this unending monologue
just like the growling thing we call a dog?
Wisława Szymborska, “Astonishment”, Poems New and Collected: 1957 - 1997
you leave me with my lone,
nonconvertible, unmetamorphic body:
I'm one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
Wisława Szymborska, from “An Effort”, Calling Out to Yeti
Death?
When it comes, you’ll be dreaming
that you don’t need to breathe;
that breathless silence is
the music of the dark
and it’s part of the rhythm
to vanish like a spark.
Wisława Szymborska, from “I’m Working on the World”, Calling Out to Yeti
The hour between night and day.
The hour between toss and turn.
The hour of thirty-year-olds.
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.
Wisława Szymborska, from “Four in the Morning”, Calling Out to Yeti
#wisława szymborska#wislawa szymborska#four in the morning#lit#poetry#4am#calling out to yeti#those haunting early am hours#poems new and collected: 1957 - 1997#poems new and collected#quotes#nuit#morning#cw suicidal ideology#'the hour of do-we-vanish-too-without-a-trace'...#uuughg#just carve my heart out with a silver spoon
In danger, the holothurian cuts itself in two.
It abandons one self to a hungry world
and with the other self it flees.
It violently divides into doom and salvation,
retribution and reward, what has been and what will be.
An abyss appears in the middle of its body
between what instantly becomes two foreign shores.
Life on one shore, death on the other.
Here hope there despair.
If there are scales, the pans don’t move.
If there is justice, this is it.
To die just as required, without excess.
To grow back just what’s needed from what’s left.
We, too, can divide ourselves, it’s true.
But only into flesh and a broken whisper.
Into flesh and poetry.
The throat on one side, laughter on the other,
quiet, quickly dying out.
Here the heavy heart, there non omnis moriar –
just three little words, like a flight’s three feathers.
The abyss does not divide us.
The abyss surrounds us.
Wisława Szymborska, “Autonomy”, Poems New and Collected: 1957 - 1997
How could she know
that even despair can work out for you
if you're lucky enough
to outlive it.
Wisława Szymborska, from “Laughter”, Poems New and Collected: 1957 - 1997
I’ll stay serene, won’t feel a thing,
yes, I will turn my head away
after I say goodbye, my king,
at [a] railway station, someday.
My king, it is the fool who’ll lie
across the tracks; the fool, not I.
Wisława Szymborska, from “Shadow”, Poems New and Collected: 1957 - 1997