On these days of the International Book Fair in Warsaw, here is a Chinese Poem by a Polish poet, ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI, in an American translation:

Chinese Poem

I read a Chinese poem
written a thousand years ago.
The author talks about the rain
that fell all night
on the bamboo roof of his boat
and the peace that finally
settled in his heart.
Is it just coincidence
that it's November again, with fog
and a leaden twilight?
Is it just chance
that someone else is living?
poets attach great importance
to prizes and success
but autumn after autumn
tears leaves from the proud trees
and if anything remains
it's only the soft murmur of the rain
in poems
neither happy nor sad.
Only purity can't be seen,
and evening, when both light and shadow
forget us for a moment,
busily shuffling mysteries.

(translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh)

Chiński wiersz

Czytałem chiński wiersz

napisany przed tysiącem lat.

Autor opowiada o deszczu

padającym przez całą noc

na bambusowy dach łodzi

i o spokoju, który nareszcie

zagościł w jego sercu.

Czy to zbieg okoliczności,

że znowu jest listopad i mgła

i ołowiany zmierzch?

Czy to przypadek,

że znowu ktoś żyje?

Poeci przywiązują wielką wagę

do sukcesów i nagród,

ale jesień po jesieni

odziera z liści dumne drzewa

i jeśli coś zostaje

to delikatny szmer deszczu

w wierszach, które nie są

ani radosne, ani smutne.

Tylko czystość jest niewidoczna

i wieczór, kiedy cień i światło

zapominają o nas na moment

zajęte tasowaniem tajemnic.

Adam Zagajewski

***

From a September 2001 issue of The New Yorker:

TRY TO PRAISE THE MUTILATED WORLD

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

(Translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh)

***

ELEGY FOR THE LIVING

The joy of the moment turns suddenly
into a black hood with openings
only for eyes, mouth, tongue, grief. More grief.
The living see off their days
that flee
like negatives, exposed once
but never developed.
The living exist, so light-mindedly, so nonchantly,
that the dead are abashed.
They smile sadly: Children,
we were like you, just the same.
Above us, robinias blossomed,
and in the robinias, nightingales sang.

(Translated from Polish by Renata Gorczynska, Benjamin Ivry, C.K.Williams)

***

THE CITY WHERE I WANT TO LIVE

The city is quiet at dusk,
when pale stars waken from their swoon,
and resounds at noon with the voices
of ambitious philosophers and merchants
bearing velvet from the East.
The flames of conversation burn there,
but not pyres.
Old churches, the mossy stones
of ancient prayer, are both its ballast
and its rocket ship.
It is a just city
where foreigners aren’t punished,
a city quick to remember
and slow to forget,
tolerating poets, forgiving prophets
for their hopeless lack of humor.
The city was based
on Chopin’s preludes,
taking from them only joy and sorrow.
Small hills circle it
in a wide collar; ash trees
grow there, and the slim poplar,
chief justice in the state of trees.
The swift river flowing through the city’s heart
murmurs cryptic gretings
day and night
from the springs, the mountains, and the sky.

(Translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh)

***

Between the computer, a pencil, and a typewriter
half my day passes. One day it will be half a century.
I live in strange cities and sometimes talk
with strangers about matters strange to me.
I listen to music a lot: Bach, Mahler, Chopin, Shostakovich.
I see three elements in music: weakness, power, and pain.
The fourth has no name.
I read poets, living and dead, who teach me
tenacity, faith, and pride. I try to understand
the great philosophers--but usually catch just
scraps of their precious thoughts.
I like to take long walks on Paris streets
and watch my fellow creatures, quickened by envy,
anger, desire; to trace a silver coin
passing from hand to hand as it slowly
loses its round shape (the emperor's profile is erased).
Beside me trees expressing nothing
but a green, indifferent perfection.
Black birds pace the fields,
waiting patiently like Spanish widows.
I'm no longer young, but someone else is always older.
I like deep sleep, when I cease to exist,
and fast bike rides on country roads when poplars and houses
dissolve like cumuli on sunny days.
Sometimes in museums the paintings speak to me
and irony suddenly vanishes.
I love gazing at my wife's face.
Every Sunday I call my father.
Every other week I meet with friends,
thus proving my fidelity.
My country freed itself from one evil. I wish
another liberation would follow. 
Could I help in this? I don't know.
I'm truly not a child of the ocean,
as Antonio Machado wrote about himself,
but a child of air, mint and cello
and not all the ways of the high world
cross paths with the life that--so far--
belongs to me.

 

From Mysticism for Beginners by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Claire Cavanaugh. Translation copyright © 1997 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. Reprinted by permission at http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?45442B7C000C070C0E73 All rights reserved.

by CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ (1980 Nobel Prize)

THE SECOND SPACE

The heavenly halls are so spacious!
Ascend to them on stairs of air.
Above white clouds the hanging celestial gardens.

A soul tears away from the body and soars.
It remembers that there's up and down.

Have we really lost faith in a second space?
They've dissolved, disappeared, both Heaven and Hell?

Without unearthly meadows how will one meet salvation?
Where will the gathering of the damned find its abode?

Let us weep, lament the enormous loss.
Let us smear our faces with coal, disarrange our hair.

Let us implore, so that it is returned to us,
The second space.

Czeslaw Milosz
(Translated, from the Polish, by the author, Robert Hass, and Renata Gorczynski; in: The New Yorker, Nov. 4, 2002)

***

TIDINGS

Of earthly civilization what shall we say?

That it was a system of colored spheres cast in smoked glass,
Where a luminescent liquid thread kept winding and unwinding.

Or that it was an array of sunburnt palaces
Shooting up from a dome with massive gates
Behind which walked a monstrosity without a face.

That every day lots were cast, and that whoever drew low
Was marched there as sacrifice: old men, children, young boys and young girls.

Or we may say otherwise: that we lived in a golden fleece,
In a rainbow net, in a cloud cocoon
Suspended from the branch of a galactic tree,
And our net was woven from the stuff of signs,
Hieroglyphs for the eye and ear, amorous rings.
A sound reverberated inward, sculpturing our time,
The flicker, flutter, twitter of our language.

For from what could we weave the boundary
Between within and without, light and abyss,
If not from ourselves, our own warm breath,
And lipstick and gauze and muslin,
From the heartbeat whose silence makes the world die?

Or perhaps we'll say nothing of earthly civilization.
For nobody really knows what it was.

(Translated by the author and Lillian Vallee)
http://www.utoronto.ca/slavic/tsq/022002/gombrowicz.html

Translators are often called to be poets, those "creative artists of great imaginative and expressive gifts and special sensitivity to their medium."

by WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA (1996 Nobel Prize)

More info about the author:
http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1996/poems-5-e.html

A review:
http://www.rattle.com/rattle7/7reviews.htm

PSALM

Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states!
How many clouds float past them with impunity;
how much desert sand shifts from one land to another;
how many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil
in provocative hops!

Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers
or alights on the roadblock at the border?
A humble robin - still, its tail resides abroad
while its beak stays home. If that weren't enough, it won't stop
bobbing!

Among innumerable insects, I'll single out only the ant
between the border guard's left and right boots
blithely ignoring the questions "Where from?" and "Where to?"

Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos
prevailing on every continent!
Isn't that a privet on the far bank
smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river?
And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms,
would disrupt the sacred bounds of territorial waters?

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 bowling 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.
The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.

(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

***

THE JOY OF WRITING

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
Silence - this word also rustles across the page
and parts the boughs
that have sprouted from the word "woods."

Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,
are letters up to no good,
clutches of clauses so subordinate
they'll never let her get away.

Each drop of ink contains a fair supply
of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights,
prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment,
surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.

They forget that what's here isn't life.
Other laws, black on white, obtain.
The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say,
and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities,
full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.
Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall,
not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop.

Is there then a world
where I rule absolutely on fate?
A time I bind with chains of signs?
An existence become endless at my bidding?

The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.

(Translated by S. Baranczak & Clare Cavanagh)


***

ON DEATH, WITHOUT EXAGGERATION

It can't take a joke,
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships, or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.

It can't even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn't strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won't help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'etat
is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies' skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

Whoever claims that it's omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it's not.

There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment.

Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you've come
can't be undone.

(Translated by S. Baranczak & Clare Cavanagh)

***

CHILDREN OF OUR AGE

We are children of our age,
it's a political age.

All day long, all through the night,
all affairs - yours, ours, theirs -
are political affairs.

Whether you like it or not,
your genes have a political past,
your skin, a political cast,
your eyes, a political slant.

Whatever you say reverberates,
whatever you don't say speaks for itself.
So either way you're talking politics.

Even when you take to the woods,
you're taking political steps
on political grounds.

Apolitical poems are also political,
and above us shines a moon
no longer purely lunar.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
And though it troubles the digestion
it's a question, as always, of politics.

To acquire a political meaning
you don't even have to be human.
Raw material will do,
or protein feed, or crude oil,

or a conference table whose shape
was quarreled over for months:
Should we arbitrate life and death
at a round table or a square one?

Meanwhile, people perished,
animals died,
houses burned,
and the fields ran wild
just as in times immemorial
and less political.

(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak & Clare Cavanagh)

***

The above poems come from the volume Nic dwa razy.
Wybór wierszy, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 1997.
As far as the English version is concerned, that volume
is an expanded version of View with a Grain of Sand
which was published in the US in 1995 by Harcourt Brace & Co. The translation by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare
Cavanagh was awarded the annual PEN-Club and the
Book-of-the-Month Club Prize for the best literary
translation published in the US. What follows is the
original Polish text of one of the above poems, as
requested by one of TC visitors:

O ŚMIERCI BEZ PRZESADY

Nie zna się na żartach,
na gwiazdach, na mostach,
na tkactwie, na górnictwie, na uprawie roli,
na budowie okrętów i pieczeniu ciasta.

W nasze rozmowy o planach na jutro
wtrąca swoje ostatnie słowo
nie na temat.

Nie umie nawet tego,
co bezpośrednio łączy się z jej fachem:
ani grobu wykopać,
ani trumny sklecić,
ani sprzątnąć po sobie.

Zajęta zabijaniem,
robi to niezdarnie,
bez systemu i wprawy.
Jakby na każdym z nas uczyła się dopiero.

Tryumfy tryumfami,
ale ileż klęsk,
ciosów chybionych
i prób podejmowanych od nowa!

Czasami brak jej siły,
żeby strącić muchę z powietrza.
Z niejedną gąsienicą
przegrywa wyścig w pełzaniu.

Te wszystkie bulwy, strąki,
czułki, płetwy, tchawki,
pióra godowe i zimowa sierść
świadczą o zaległościach
w jej marudnej pracy.

* * * 

The Three Oddest Words

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.

(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

Trzy słowa najdziwniejsze

Kiedy wymawiam słowo Przyszłość,
pierwsza sylaba odchodzi już do przeszłości.

Kiedy wymawiam słowo Cisza,
niszczę ją.

Kiedy wymawiam słowo Nic,
stwarzam coś, co nie mieści się w żadnym niebycie.

by ANNA KAMIEŃSKA

HISTORY 

We no longer have history
all we have are wasted
moments of life
forty-eight hours
of mock justice
this is not history these are not its bells
a day’s quicksand sinking voices
our funerals in whispering leaves
the embrace above the coffin eyes eyes
and time rolling over us
will not have the face of history
but a fox’s sly and treacherous snout

Anna Kamienska, 1983
(Translated from Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

by TADEUSZ RÓŻEWICZ

WITNESS

My dear, you know I am in
but don’t sudenly enter
my room

You might see me
silent
over a blank sheet

Can you write
about love
when you hear the cries of
the slaughtered and disgraced
can you write
about death
watching the little faces
of children

Do not sudenly
enter my room

You will see
a dumb and bound
witness to love
overcome by death

(Translated from Polish by Adam Czerniawski)

Jacek!

Thanks a million for the beautiful poems!  I read all of them with great interest and saved them for future enjoyment.  Speaking of poems and singing I have enclosed three language versions of the Ode To Joy.  It is obviously not a Polish work of art and I have absolutely no intention of adding politics to our forum (the fact that it is the European Anthem), but I thought that a joyous and cheerful piece would help us jump start the new week on a happier note and provide an opportunity to compare the various language versions.  Your contribution of Polish poetry has been absolutely fantastic and I thank you most cordially for that. 

Pozdrawiam serdecznie!

"Oda do radości" - Hymn UE

O, radości iskro bogów, kwiecie elizejskich pól,
święta na twym świętym progu staje nasz
natchniony chór. Jasność twoja wszystko
zaćmi, złączy co rozdzielił los, wszyscy ludzie
będą braćmi tam, gdzie twój przemówi głos.

Patrz, patrz, wielkie słońce światem, biegnie
sypiąc złote skry, jak zwycięzca i bohater
biegnij, bracie, tak i ty. Radość tryska z piersi
ziemi, radość pije cały świat, dziś wchodzimy,
wstępujemy na radości złoty ślad.

Ona w sercu, w zbożu, w śpiewie, ona w
splocie ludzkich rąk, z niej najlichszy robak
czerpie, w niej największy nieba krąg.
Wstańcie ludzie, wstańcie wszędzie, ja
nowinę niosę wam: na gwiaździstym
firmamencie bliska radość błyszczy nam.

Joy, Oh ! divine scintillation
Sparkling from Elysium,
With a cheerful animation
Goddess, to thy shrine we come.

These our nations once divided
Now your magic spells unite,
Where your wing does beat around them
Brotherhood and love delight.

With a kiss bestowed on millions
Embraced in fraternity,
Let us build a world of union
And peace for all humanity.

Etincelle, Oh ! Joie divine
Jaillie de l’Elyséum
L’allégresse nous anime
Pour entrer dans ton royaume.

Par ta magie sont unanimes
Des peuples jadis divisés,
Là où ton aile domine
Règne la fraternité.

Soyons unis comme frères
D’un baiser au monde entier
Amis bâtissons une ère
De paix pour l’humanité.

Malgorzata,

Indeed, overcoming suffering is in itself joy!

"While being pounded by wave after wave of hardship and suffering, [Beethoven] commenced writing his Ninth Symphony with a choral version of the great German poet Schiller's eulogy "Ode to Joy." He went about forging his suffering into joy. Schiller wrote "Ode to Joy" in 1785, when Beethoven was 15. Extolling the triumph of human freedom, the love of humanity, the poem was enthusiastically received by the German people. Beethoven...cherished a deep an abiding love for this poem throughout his life. By age 22, he was already making an attempt to set it to music and even conceived an idea for a melody for "Ode to Joy" at that time. But it took more than thirty years before the poem and melody were finally fused in the choral finale of the Ninth Symphony." www.sgi-norcal.org/fest2001/downloads/data/district_study_topic_200107.pdf

Now about Schiller. He wrote his "An die Freude" near Dresden, which "owes its cultural stature to Augustus the Strong (1670 -1733) and his son, Augustus III, (1696-1763), both electors of Saxony and Kings of Poland, who transformed a former modest princely residence into a royal city with a lavish court." http://www.washingtoninternational.com/cf/news.cfm?showpage=112

Indeed, Europe used to be a small world!

Jacek

P.S. We failed to mention that the Polish translation of the Schiller's Ode you quoted was done by another famous Polish poet, Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński.

It was my mistake not to mention Gałczyński.  I apologize for the omission.  Since this year is the 50^th anniversary of his death I allowed myself to present a tiny sample of Gałczyński’s work.  As you can see great composers as well as translators were on his mind at some point in time.

Bajka o sześciu Tłumaczkach

Sześć tłumaczek w ramach nieuzgodnienia
tłumaczyło tę samą powieść w oparach natchnienia:
pierwszej wyszedł poemat oktawą,
drugiej coś ze sportu: "Kiszka, brawo!",
trzecia przywiozła powieść historyczną
pt. "Zamierzchłe czasy",
czwarta rewelację w trzech tomach (nieomal klasyk!),
piąta reportaż "Tam, gdzie był dół",
szósta - "O hodowli pszczół".

Pytanie

Skąd ta historia dzika?

Odpowiedź

Żadna nie znała języka.

Morał, czyli pouczenie:

Więc po co sięgać do oryginału?
Zamiast jednego, sześć dzieł powstało.

Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński
Leśniczówka Pranie, 1951 (edited by M. Marjanska-Fish, May 19, 03)

Ile lat nad strof tworzeniem?
Ile krzyku w poematy?
Ile chwil przy Bethovenie?
Przy Corellim? Przy Scarlattim?

(Piesni, III, fragment)

There is of course so much more to his work (e.g. the love poems).

Best wishes,

Malgorzata

To continue on a lighter note, here is a selection of aphorisms by STANISŁAW JERZY LEC (as posted by Nikita and Aurora to the other website):

Do not ask God the way to heaven; he will show you the hardest one.

Illiterates have to dictate.

I prefer the sign NO ENTRY to the one that says NO EXIT.

All is in the hands of man. Therefore wash them often.

The first condition of immortality is death.

Even if you feed the cow cocoa you will not get chocolate.

If the art of conversation stood a little higher we would have a lower birthrate.

A fat man lives shorter but eats longer.

There are grammatical errors even in his silence.

Even the masochists tell everything when tortured. From sheer gratitude.

At the beginning there was the Word - at the end just the Cliche.

Optimists and pessimists differ only on the date of the end of the world.

Is it a progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork?

America was not discovered by Americans - shame on them.

If you want to hide your face, walk naked.

The exit is usually where the entrance was.

In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.

Be yourself. A horse without the lancer is still a horse; a lancer without the horse is just a man.
Tell me whom you sleep with and I shall tell you whom you dream of.

A tired exclamation mark is a question mark.

Value your words. Each one may be the last.

How can you translate sighs?

We demand an eight-hour thinking day!

Why do I write these short aphorisms? Because words fail me!

I give you bitter pills in sugar coating. The pills are harmless: the poison is in the sugar.

Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's; and unto human beings, what?

When smashing monuments, save the pedestals - they always come in handy.

When you jump for joy, beware that no-one moves the ground from beneath your feet.

The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper.

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.

At the beginning there was the Word - at the end just the Cliche.

Religion is death insurance with a non-renewable policy.

"If you think you can do something, you are right.
If you think you can´t do something, you are right, too". Henry Ford

"Millions long for immortality but do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."

Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts.

Trust everybody, but cut the cards.

In God we trust. (All others pay cash...)

The optimist and the pessimist are not only both mistaken but make, in fact, the same mistake; that of allowing emotions to adulterate fact.

If the terrain and the map do not agree, follow the terrain. (Swedish army manual)

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. (I love this one...)
Pablo Picasso

People are DNA's way of making more DNA.

You can't have everything. Where would you put it?

I am an agnostic, dyslexic insomniac. I stay up all night wondering if there is a dog.

Some pursue happiness. Others create it.

If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito...

I love cooking with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

***

Some other ones in Polish:

A może czyste ręce powinny być dłuższe?

Biedny, kto gwiazd nie widzi bez uderzenia w zęby.

Błoto stwarza czasem pozory głębi.

Bogu, co boskie, cesarzowi, co cesarskie. A co ludziom?

Budujcie mosty od człowieka do człowieka, oczywiście zwodzone.

Chciałem powiedzieć światu tylko jedno słowo.
Ponieważ nie potrafiłem tego, stałem się pisarzem.

Chleb otwiera każde usta.

Ci, którzy mają ideę wciąż w gębie, mają ją zazwyczaj i w pobliskim nosie.

Ciasnota umysłowa się rozszerza!

Ciemne okna są czasem jasnym dowodem.

Co nas trzyma na tym globie prócz siły ciążenia?

Czas pozostanie ludożercą.

Czas robi swoje. A ty człowieku?

Czasem coś kryje się za czymś, przed czym my się kryjemy.

Czasem dzwony kołyszą dzwonnikiem.

Czasem łatwiej przyznać nagrodę niż rację.

Czy jestem wierzący? Bóg jeden raczy wiedzieć.

Czy jeżeli ludożerca je nożem i widelcem - to postęp?

Czy wśród ludożerców są jarosze?

Człowiek - persona non grata.

Człowiek - produkt uboczny miłości.

Człowiek we własnym życiu gra zaledwie mały epizod.

Człowiek z człowiekiem prowadzi od wieków jeden monolog.

Człowieku, świat stoi przed tobą otworem, więc uważaj byś zeń nie wyleciał.

Diabeł nie śpi z byle kim.

Dialog półinteligentów równa się monologowi ćwierćinteligenta.

Dno jest dnem, nawet jeśli jest odwrócone do góry.

Do skoku w przepaść nie trzeba trampoliny.

Dwa czarne charaktery, a jak odmiennej barwy.

Działanie ucisku zależy od materiału. Jedni stają się mniejsi, drudzy więksi.

Kanibale wolą tych, co nie mają kości.

Kiedy człowiek pokona przestrzeń międzyludzką?

Klucz sytuacji często tkwi w zamku sąsiada.

Trudno doczytać się własnego analfabetyzmu.

Mężczyźni wolą kobiety ładne niż mądre, ponieważ łatwiej im przychodzi patrzenie niż myślenie

Czasem trzeba zamilknąć, żeby zostać wysłuchanym.

By dojść do źródła, trzeba płynąć pod prąd.

Nie zgadzam się z matematyką. Uważam, że suma zer daje groźną liczbę.

Już sam znak paragrafu wygląda jak narzędzie tortury.

Gdyby jeszcze kozła ofiarnego można było doić.

I masochiści wyznają wszystko na torturach. Z wdzięczności.

Nauka jest sprawą wielkich. Maluczkim dostają się nauczki.

Rany się zabliźniają, ale blizny rosną wraz z nami.

Kogut opiewa nawet ten ranek, w którym idzie na rosół.

Wszystko mija, nawet najdłuższa żmija.

Nieobecni nigdy nie maja racji, ale bardzo często zachowują życie.

An article about the author: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/barber/dbszym.htm

By Wisława Szymborska

From: Chwila/Moment

Translated by: Clare Cavanagh, Stanisław Barańczak

Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2003

EVERYTHING

Everything -
a bumptious, stuck-up word.
It should be written in quotes.
It pretends to miss nothing,
to gather, hold, contain, and have.
While all the while it's just
a shred of gale.

WSZYSTKO

Wszystko -
słowo bezczelne i nadęte pychą.
Powinno być pisane w cudzysłowie.
Udaje, że niczego nie pomija,
że skupia, obejmuje, zawiera i ma.
A tymczasem jest tylko
strzępkiem zawieruchy.

* * *

LIST

I’ve made a list of questions
to which I no longer expect answers,
since it’s either too early for them,
or I won’t have time to understand.

The list of questions is long,
and takes up matters great and small,
but I don’t want to bore you,
and will just divulge a few:

What was real
and what scarcely seemed to be
in this auditorium,
stellar and substellar,
requiring tickets both to get in
and get out;

What about the whole living world,
which I won’t succeed
in comparing with a different living world; 

What will the papers
write about tomorrow;

When will wars cease,
and what will take their place;

Whose third finger now wears
the ring
stolen from me — lost;

Where’s the place of free will,
which manages to be and not to be
simultaneously;

What about those dozens of people —
did we really know each other; 

What was M. trying to tell me
when she could no longer speak;

Why did I take bad things
for good ones
and what would it take
to keep from doing it again?

There are certain questions
I jotted down just before sleep.

On waking
I couldn’t make them out.

Sometimes I suspect
that this is a genuine code,
but that question, too,
will abandon me one day.

SPIS

Sporządziłam spis pytań,
na które nie doczekam się już odpowiedzi,
bo albo za wcześnie na nie,
albo nie zdołam ich pojąć.

Spis pytań jest długi,
porusza sprawy ważne i mniej ważne,
a że nie chcę was nudzić,
wyjawię tylko niektóre:

Co było rzeczywiste,
a co się ledwie zdawało
na tej widowni
gwiezdnej i podgwiezdnej,
gdzie prócz wejściówki
obowiązuje wyjściówka;

Co z całym światem żywym,
którego nie zdążę
z innym żywym porównać;

O czym będą pisały
nazajutrz gazety;

Kiedy ustaną wojny
i co je zastąpi;

Na czyim teraz palcu
serdeczny pierścionek
skradziony mi —zgubiony;

Gdzie miejsce wolnej woli,
która potrafi być i nie być
równocześnie;

Co z dziesiątkami ludzi -
czy myśmy naprawdę się znali;

Co próbowała mi powiedzieć M.,
kiedy już mówić nie mogła;

Dlaczego rzeczy złe
brałam za dobre
i czego mi potrzeba,
żeby się więcej nie mylić?

Pewne pytania
notowałam chwilę przed zaśnięciem.
Po przebudzeniu
już ich nie mogłam odczytać.

Czasami podejrzewam,
że to szyfr właściwy.
Ale to też pytanie,
które mnie kiedyś opuści.