Wisława Szymborska: Cytaty po angielsku (strona 2)

"No End of Fun"
Poems New and Collected (1998), No End of Fun (1967)
Kontekst: He has only just learned to tell dreams from waking;
only just realized that he is he;
only just whittled with his hand né fin
a flint, a rocket ship;
easily drowned in the ocean's teaspoon,
not even funny enough to tickle the void:
sees only with his eyes;
hears only with his ears;
his speech's personal best is the conditional;
he uses his reason to pick holes in reason.
In short, he's next to to one,
but his head's full of freedom, omniscience and the Being
beyond his foolish meat —
did you ever!

"Census"
Poems New and Collected (1998), No End of Fun (1967)
Kontekst: Our stockpile of antiquity grows constantly,
it's overflowing,
reckless squatters jostle for a place in history,
hordes of sword fodder,
Hector's nameless extras, no less brave than he,
thousands upon thousands of singular faces,
each the first and last for all time,
in each a pair of inimitable eyes.
How easy it was to live not knowing this,
so sentimental, so spacious.

"The End and the Beginning"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The End and the Beginning (1993)

"Cat in an Empty Apartment"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The End and the Beginning (1993)
Kontekst: Something doesn't start
at its usual time.
Something doesn't happen
as it should.
Someone was always, always here,
then suddenly disappeared
and stubbornly stays disappeared.

"Conversation with a Stone".
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)
Kontekst: No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.
Even sight heightened to become all-seeing
will do you no good without a sense of taking part.
You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what the sense should be,
only its seed, imagination.

"View with a Grain of Sand"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)
Kontekst: The window has a wonderful view of a lake,
but the view doesn't view itself.
It exists in this world
colorless, shapeless,
soundless, odorless, and painless.

"Under One Small Star"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Could Have (1972)

"Lot's Wife"
Poems New and Collected (1998), A Large Number (1976)
Kontekst: I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now — every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.

"A Film from the Sixties"
Poems New and Collected (1998), No End of Fun (1967)

"Psalm"
Poems New and Collected (1998), A Large Number (1976)
Kontekst: And how can we talk of order overall
when the very placement of the stars
leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting!
And dust blowing all over the steppes
as if they hadn't been partitioned!
And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves,
that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!
Only what is human can truly be foreign.

"Our Ancestors' Short Lives"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)
Kontekst: Few of them made it to thirty.
Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.
Childhood ended as fast as wolf cubs grow.
One had to hurry, to get on with life
before the sun went down,
before the first snow.

The Poet and the World (1996)
Kontekst: Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners — I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."

"A Film from the Sixties"
Poems New and Collected (1998), No End of Fun (1967)
Kontekst: Within him, there's awful darkness, in the darkness a small boy. God of humor, do something about him, OK?
God of humor, do something about him today.

"Smiles"
Poems New and Collected (1998), A Large Number (1976)
Kontekst: The going's rough, and so we need the laugh
of bright incisors, molars of goodwill.
Our times are still not safe and sane enough
for faces to show ordinary sorrow.

"Clouds"
Poems New and Collected (1998), New Poems 1993 - 97
Kontekst: I'd have to be really quick
to describe clouds —
a split second's enough
for them to start being something else. Their trademark:
they don't repeat a single
shape, shade, pose, arrangement.

"I Am Too Close..."
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)

"An Unexpected Meeting"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)
Kontekst: 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.

"An Unexpected Meeting"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)
Kontekst: 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.

I'm Working on the World"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Calling Out to Yeti (1957)
Kontekst: I'm working on the world,
revised, improved edition,
featuring fun for fools
blues for brooders,
combs for bald pates,
tricks for old dogs.