Even a passing moment has its fertile past, its Friday before Saturday, its May before June. — Wisława Szymborska, from “No Title Required,” Poems New and Collected 1957-1997, trans. Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh, (Harcourt Brace & Co., 1998)
Let the people who never find true love keep saying that there’s no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die. — Wisława Szymborska, from “True Love,” View With a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems. (Harcourt Brace; 1st edition, May 26, 1995)
My distinguishing marks are wonder and despair. — Wisława Szymborska, from “The Sky,” People on a Bridge. (• Forest Books; First Edition edition, April 1990)
A Note Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings; to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur; to tell pain from everything it’s not; to squeeze inside events, dawdle in views, to seek the least of all possible mistakes. An extraordinary chance… Continue reading Wisława Szymborska
I had the dream where you read your own poems, Like those written sometime ago, only these were in the grey book written after death… And you look finer, paler and tinier every passing moment, Then you disappear. The last to vanish were your hands And only the poems were left unharmed And in the… Continue reading Grażyna Chrostowska
Tell me what’s the difference between hope and waiting because my heart doesn’t know it constantly cuts itself on the glass of waiting it constantly gets lost in the fog of hope — Anna Kamienska, “Difference,” Astonishments: Selected Poems of Anna Kamienska. (Paraclete Press (MA); First Edition edition July 1, 2007) Originally published 2007.
Do you know how it is when one wakes at night suddenly and asks, listening to the pounding heart: what more do you want, insatiable? — Czeslaw Milosz, from “Farewell” (1945). New and Collected Poems (1931 – 2001) Ecco; Reprint edition (March 25, 2003) Originally published January 1st 2001.
