Wislawa poems on Hello Poetry

Jim Davis Mar 2017

Some Like Poetry - Poem by Wislawa Szymborska

Some -
thus not all. Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting schools, where one has to,
and the poets themselves,
there might be two people per thousand.

Like -
but one also likes chicken soup with noodles,
one likes compliments and the color blue,
one likes an old scarf,
one likes having the upper hand,
one likes stroking a dog.

Poetry -
but what is poetry.
Many shaky answers
have been given to this question.
But I don't know and don't know and hold on to it
like to a sustaining railing.

Translated by Regina Grol
Wislawa Szymborska

Wisława Szymborska
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska
Szymborska 2011 (1).jpg
Wisława Szymborska, Kraków, Poland 2011
Born 2 July 1923
Prowent, Poland (now Kórnik, Poland)
Died 1 February 2012 (aged 88)
Kraków, Poland
Occupation
Poet essayist translator
Nationality Polish
Notable awards
Goethe Prize (1991)
Herder Prize (1995)
Nobel Prize in Literature (1996)
Order of the White Eagle (2011)
Spouse Adam Włodek (1948–1954; divorced)
Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska[1][2] [viˈswava ʂɨmˈbɔrska] (2 July 1923 – 1 February 2012) was a Polish poet, essayist, translator and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Prowent, which has since become part of Kórnik, she later resided in Kraków until the end of her life.[3][4] In Poland, Szymborska's books have reached sales rivaling prominent prose authors: although she once remarked in a poem, "Some Like Poetry" ("Niektórzy lubią poezję"), that no more than two out of a thousand people care for the art.[5]
.....
Her reputation rests on a relatively small body of work, fewer than 350 poems. When asked why she had published so few poems, she said: "I have a trash can in my home".[3]

Liliana Jaworska Sep 2014

I am too close for him by Wislawa Szymborska

I am too close for him to dream about me.
I'm not flying over him, not fleeing him
under the roots of trees. I am too close.
Not with my voice sings the fish in the net.
Not from my finger rolls the ring.
I am too close. A large house is on fire
without my calling for help. Too close
for a bell dangling from my hair to chime.
Too close for me to enter as a guest
before whom the walls part.
Never again will I die so readily,
so far beyond the flesh, so inadvertently
as once in his dream. I am too close,
too close—I hear the hiss
and see the glittering husk of that word,
as I lie immobilized in his embrace. He sleeps,
more available at this moment
to the ticket lady of a one-lion traveling circus
seen but once in his life
than to me lying beside him.
Now a valley grows for her in him, ochre-leaved,
closed off by a snowy mountain
in the azure air. I am too close
to fall out of the sky for him. My scream
might only awaken him. Poor me,
limited to my own form,
but I was a birch tree, I was a lizard,
I emerged from satins and sundials
my skins shimmering in different colors. I possessed
the grace to disappear from astonished eyes,
and that is the rich man's riches. I am too close,
too close for him to dream about me.
I slip my arm out from under his sleeping head.
It's numb, full of imaginary pins and needles.
And on the head of each, ready to be counted,
dance the fallen angels.

Jenette DeBarge Feb 2012

Four in the Morning (after Wislawa Szymborska)

The hour that demands the following day be wasted.
The hour that proves you are irresponsible.
The hour for those under twenty-five.

The hour birds wake to begin their incessant morning clamor.
The hour the body begins to loathe the mind.
The hour focus drifts away on the smoke of tonight's last cigarette.
The hour of what-am-I-doing and how-can-I-live-like-this.

The incorrigible hour.
Chronic, hopeless.
The most degenerate of all hours.

There is little pleasure in familiarity with four in the morning.
If those birds are screaming love ballads to the early morning sun
three cheers for the birds. And let me now lie down to sleep
if I am to go on living.

SweetCindy Jan 2013

In Praise of Feeling Bad about Yourself (translated from Polish) - by Wislawa Szymborska (7/2/1923 - 2/1/2012)

In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself

The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn't understand remorse.
Lions and lice don't waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they're right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they're light.

On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of *******
a clear conscience is Number One.

- by Wislawa Szymborska born 7/2/1923 (July 2nd is coincidentally my birthday) - died 2/1/2012.

Liliana Jaworska Sep 2014

Under One Small Star by Wislawa Szymborska

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don't pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.
Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man.
I know I won't be justified as long as I live,
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.

#soul #apologies

irinia Jul 2017

"Foraminifera"

So then, let's take the Foraminifera.
They lived, since they were, and were since they lived.
They did what they could since they were able.
In the plural since the plural,
although each one on its own
small limestone shell.
Time summarized them later
in layers, since layers,
without going into details,
since there's pity in the details.
And so I have before me
two views in one:
a mournful cemetery made
of tiny eternal rests
or,
rising from the sea,
the azure sea, dazzling white cliffs,
cliffs that are here because they are.

Wislawa Szymborska from Here New Poems
translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh

#time #eternity #being

Poetoftheway Oct 2023

Some Like Poetry (by Wislawa Szymborska)

Some -
thus not all. Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting schools, where one has to,
and the poets themselves,
there might be two people per thousand.

Like -
but one also likes chicken soup with noodles,
one likes compliments and the color blue,
one likes an old scarf,
one likes having the upper hand,
one likes stroking a dog.

Poetry -
but what is poetry.
Many shaky answers
have been given to this question.
But I don't know and don't know and hold on to it
like to a sustaining railing.

Wislawa Szymborska

Translated by Regina Grol

Wisława Szymborska
Well-known in her native Poland, Wisława Szymborska received international recognition when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. In awarding the prize, the Academy praised her “poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.” Collections of her poems that have been translated into English include People on a Bridge (1990), View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems (1995), Miracle Fair (2001), and Monologue of a Dog (2005).

Readers of Szymborska’s poetry have often noted its wit, irony, and deceptive simplicity. Her poetry examines domestic details and occasions, playing these against the backdrop of history. In the poem “The End and the Beginning,” Szymborska writes, “After every war / someone’s got to tidy up.”

In the New York Times Book Review, Stanislaw Baranczak wrote, “The typical lyrical situation on which a Szymborska poem is founded is the confrontation between the directly stated or implied opinion on an issue and the question that raises doubt about its validity. The opinion not only reflects some widely shared belief or is representative of some widespread mind-set, but also, as a rule, has a certain doctrinaire ring to it: the philosophy behind it is usually speculative, anti-empirical, prone to hasty generalizations, collectivist, dogmatic and intolerant.”

Szymborska lived most of her life in Krakow; she studied Polish literature and society at Jagiellonian University and worked as an editor and columnist. A selection of her reviews was published in English under the title Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces (2002). She received the Polish PEN Club prize, the Goethe Prize, and the Herder Prize.

Nat Lipstadt Jan 5

Poetry exactly: the never, the hapless hoping and a Sustaining Railing^

^words of Wislawa Szymborska
(a phrase from her poem “Some Like Poetry”

———————————

gorge on poetry,
thereby!
imbibe your raison d’etre,
if well examined,
one will be exclaiming:

Exactly!

we on trial from birth,
for having been born sin~innocent,
yet guilty for having allowed
in nighttime light pollution,

one searches for places in
life’s momentary memorabilia,
band~aids, orange lifesavers,
a phrase, photograph, pale bulb light…

these “things,” are our
hitching posts, lean~to,
grasped hungrily for
support whence
negotiating the
steep Spanish Steps
of the staircases of
monumental outrageous misfortune

this poetry,
this poem,
this railing,

sustaining from Day One to
Day T+1 and beyond,
a protuberance of strength
to grab onto before the
shaming of old fails falling,
a head banging despair of barely
hanging on,

unbeknownst to you passerby,
we, who live a life of bare bones,
only mimicking existence, while
questioning Death’s delayed arrival,
and only by,

this poetry,
this poem,
this railing,

sustaining our edge two forward, one back,
cognizant of our awesome missteps,
begging permission, to-liv-liven, a moment more,
offering upon-this altar, a sacrificial lamb,

this poetry,
this poem,
this railing,

sustained in the writing thereof,
expelling the fumes of the

nearly, the never, the hapless hoping

Thu Oct 26 2023
8:15am

x^words of Wislawa Szymborska
(an excerpt from her poem “Some Like Poetry”

p.m. when the poems grasps me,
my nostrils filled with single breath
good for one more day

#lipstadt #poetry #*** #sustaining #railing #exactly #protuberance

irinia Jul 2017

"Example"

A gale
stripped all the leaves from the trees last night
except from one leaf
left
to sway solo on a naked branch.

With this example
Violence demonstrates
that yes of course -
it likes its little joke from time to time.

Wislawa Szymborska from *Here New Poems

#violence #joke

irinia Jul 2017

"Divorce"

For the kids the first ending of the world.
For the cat a new Master.
For the dog a new Mistress.
For the furniture stairs, thuds, my way or the highway.
For the walls bright squares where pictures once hung.
For the neighbors new subjects, a break in the boredom.
For the car better if there were two.
For he novels, the poems - fine, take what you want.
Worse with encyclopedias and VCR's,
not to mention the guide to proper usage,
which doubtless holds pointers on two names -
are they still linked with the conjunction "and"
or does a period divide them.

Wislawa Szymborska from Here New Poems
translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh

#divorce

— The End —