WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA, Poland
(b. 1923)

Born in Kornik 1923; since 1931 she has been living in Krakow, where during 1945-1948 she studied Polish Literature and Sociology. Szymborska made her début in March 1945. During 1953-1981 she worked as poetry editor and columnist in a Kraków literary weekly where a series of her essays appeared. Szymborska has published 16 collections of poetry. Her poems have been translated into many languages. Wislawa Szymborska is the Goethe Prize winner (1991) and Herder Prize winner (1995). She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.

THE HEAVENS

I should have begun with this: the heavens.
A window without a frame, without curtains, without glass.
An opening with nothing beyond
but a vast opening.

I don't have to wait for a peaceful night
or strain my neck
to peer at the heavens.
The heavens are behind me, close to hand and in my eyes.
The heavens wrap me tightly
and lift me from beneath.

Even the highest mountains
are not nearer the heavens
than the deepest valleys.
There is no place with more of it
than another.
A cloud is no more
imbued by the heavens than a grave.
A mole is just as enraptured
as an owl stretching its wings.
Something that falls into chasm
falls as if from heaven to heaven.
Fast, flowing, steep,
flaming and flying
heavenly fragments, joined together,
blown together into heaps.
The heavens are everywhere
even in the darkness beneath your skin.
I'm devouring heaven, excreting heaven,
I'm a trap within a trap,
a lived in tenant,
an embrace embraced,
a question in response to a question.

A division between heaven and earth
is not the right way of
thinking about such a whole.
It simply conveys one
to a precise place,
that's easier to find,
should I be sought.
My tell-tale features
are happiness and despair.

THE THREE STRANGEST WORDS

When I say the word Future,
the first syllable is already a part of the past.

When I say the word Silence,
I spoil it.

When I say the word Nothing,
I create something that nothingness cannot contain.