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soracities · 14 days

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i do, often, think of that quote from wislawa szymborska talking about love and the inexplicability of some of it. "great love is never justified" etc. and it truly isn't. and thank god for that.

#p #idir lúibíní #wislawa szymborska #x

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givemearmstopraywith · 3 months

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Wislawa Szymborska

#wislawa szymborska #poetry #quotes #p #free palestine

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apoemaday · 8 days

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In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself

by Wislawa Szymborska tr. Stanislaw Baraczak and Clare Cavanagh

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 bestiality a clear conscience is Number One.

#poetry #wislawa szymborska #in praise of feeling bad about yourself #tr. stanislaw baraczak and clare cavanagh

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sageandscorpiongrass · 10 months

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Chronic.

on illness and fatigue

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undinesea · 22 days

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I don’t have to wait for a starry night; I’ve got the sky behind my back, at hand, and on my eyelids.

Wislawa Szymborska, “The End and the Beginning,” from View with a Grain of Sand: Poems

#wislawa szymborska #poetry

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dinonfissatoaffetto · 2 months

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E voleva comprare un biglietto,

andarsene via per un po’,

scrivere una lettera,

spalancare la finestra dopo la pioggia,

aprire un sentiero nel bosco,

stupirsi delle formiche,

guardare il lago

increspato dal vento.

- Wislawa Szymborska

#wislawa szymborska #dinonfissatoaffetto #poesia #letture

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araekniarchive · 10 months

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SELF-PORTRAIT AT 24

Ana Carrizo, What Was Missing

Louis de Bernieres, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

Brenna Twohy, ‘ON SEEING PHOTOS OF HIS NEW GIRLFRIEND ON FACEBOOK’, from Swallowtail

Bruce Coville, Jennifer Murdley’s Toad

The Antlers, Bear

When Harry Met Sally (1989) dir. Rob Reiner

Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

Raven Leilani, Luster

Comment left on a pinterest post

Elle Emerson, Regarding the Röttgen Pietà

Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh

Dominique Christina, Stargazer

Lia Kimura, Unknown (2018)

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Florence + The Machine, South London Forever

Wislawa Szymborska, Moment of Silence

Barbara Ras, ‘You Can’t Have It All’ from Bite Every Sorrow

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watchoutforintellect · 2 years

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Still full of blood and hopes.

Wislawa Szymborska, from ‘Funeral (I)’ featured in Map: Collected and Last Poems

#wislawa szymborska #lit #poetry #poem #funeral #hope #map #quotes #words #text

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sashayed · 1 year

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A Word on Statistics

Out of every hundred people

those who always know better: fifty-two.

Unsure of every step: almost all the rest.

Ready to help, if it doesn't take long: forty-nine.

Always good, because they cannot be otherwise: four—well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy: eighteen.

Led to error by youth (which passes): sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with: forty and four.

Living in constant fear of someone or something: seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness: twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone, turning savage in crowds: more than half, for sure.

Cruel when forced by circumstances: it's better not to know, not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight: not many more than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life except things: thirty (though I would like to be wrong).

Doubled over in pain and without a flashlight in the dark: eighty-three, sooner or later.

Those who are just: quite a few at thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand: three.

Worthy of empathy: ninety-nine.

Mortal: one hundred out of one hundred— a figure that has never varied yet.

Wisława Szymborska from Miracle Fair, 2002

#wislawa szymborska #poetry #national poetry month

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soracities · 1 year

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Wisława Szymborska, from “Children of Our Age”, View with a Grain of Sand (trans. Stanisław Barańczak & Clare Cavanagh)

#q #lit #quotes #poetry #wislawa szymborska #children of our age #view with a grain of sand #of war and violence #typography #reading #polish lit #m #x

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andhumanslovedstories · 9 months

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hey!! just wondering, is your blog @ from a longer quote/piece of writing, or is it something you came up with yourself? i feel like i've heard it somewhere before, and it would be really useful to know for a project i'm working on!

thanks <3

my url is from Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith, a Tiffany Aching book:

��To animals they were just the weather, just part of everything. But humans arose and gave them names, just as people filled the starry sky with heroes and monsters, because this turned them into stories. And humans loved stories, because once you'd turned things into stories, you could change the stories.”

My blog title "I'm here but once to the marrow of my bones" is a line from a translation of Polish poet Wisława Szymborska's poem, which I've seen called "Attempt" and also "An Effort". Most of the versions you can easily find online have a different translation of the last line ("I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones") but I've always preferred the other translation, which is the first one I encountered when I was very young in my aunt's copy of Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems.

"Attempt" Ah yes, sweet little song, how much you mock me, for even if I go o'er hill, I won't bloom as a rose. Only a rose blooms as a rose, no one else. That's for sure. I tried to put out leaves, to turn into a bush. Holding my breath--so it would happen quicker-- I waited for the moment of budding as a rose. O sweet little song, you show no mercy toward me: I have a body that's unique, immutable, I'm here but once to the marrow of my bones.

versus this translation

An Effort Alack and woe, oh song: you’re mocking me; try as I may, I’ll never be your red, red rose. A rose is a rose is a rose. And you know it. I worked to sprout leaves. I tried to take root. I held my breath to speed things up, and waited for the petals to enclose me. Merciless song, you leave me with my lone, nonconvertible, unmetamorphic body: I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.

#i love multiple translations of poems #I actually prefer much of the language in the second one #but the last line of the first one changed me #i have no idea which one is more faithful to the original and i also think we could have a fun discussion of what a faithful translation of #a poem is #wislawa szymborska

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apoemaday · 3 months

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Children of the Age

by Wislawa Szymborska tr. Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

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.

#poetry #wislawa szymborska #children of the age #tr. stanislaw baranczak and clare cavanagh

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st-just · 2 months

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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.

-Under One Small Star, by Wislawa Szymborska

#quote #poetry #Wislawa Szymborska

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aemperatrix · 1 year

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