wislawa szymborska – satomipoema

Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.

– Wislawa Szymborska –

All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.

– Wislawa Szymborska –

Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines, only to cross out one of them 15 minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens. Who could stand to watch this kind of thing?

– Wislawa Szymborska –

You have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.

– Wislawa Szymborska –

Nothing can ever happen twice.

In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.

– Wislawa Szymborska –

Keep up the good work, if only for a while,

if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.

– Wislawa Szymborska –

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

– Wislawa Szymborska –

How should we live? someone asked me in a letter.

I had meant to ask him

the same question.

– Wisława Szymborska –

Ph : Tess

My choices are rejections, since there is no other way,

but what I reject is more numerous,

denser, more demanding than before.

A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable loss.

– Wisława Szymborska –

Ph : Andrea Kiss

Dividing earth and sky

is not the right way

to think about this wholeness.

It only allows one to live

at a more precise address–

were I to be searched for

I’d be found much faster.

My distinguishing marks

are rapture and despair.

– Wisława Szymborska –

Ph : Elena Oganesyan