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I slide my arm from under the sleeper's head and it is numb, full of swarming pins, on the tip of each, waiting to be counted, the fallen angels sit.

Wislawa Szymborska

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Wislawa Szymborska
Age: 88 †
Born: 1923
Born: July 2
Died: 2012
Died: February 1
Critic
Essayist
Literary Critic
Mechanic
Poet
Translator
Writer
Kornik
Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska
Szymborska
Angel
Sleepers
Arms
Slide
Full
Counted
Head
Numb
Waiting
Slides
Hands
Pins
Angels
Swarming
Fallen
Sleeper

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Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
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Memory at last has what I sought.
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My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.
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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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Today when two people decide upon a thoughtless and precipitate abbreviation of the physical space between them, they think, at least at that moment, that they're mutually attracted and drawn together by an overwhelming force.
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There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely
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I don't know the role I'm playing. I only know it's mine, non-convertible.
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Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
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Poorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands.
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Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still
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All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination. Even the richest, most surprising and wild imagination is not as rich, wild and surprising as reality. The task of the poet is to pick singular threads from this dense, colorful fabric.
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Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
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I'm one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
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God was finally going to believe in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men.
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I'm drowning in papers.
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Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?
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No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.
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Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring - this is one of the harshest human miseries.
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They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway.
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History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, as though the one had never existed: an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle, ... emptiness running down steps toward the garden, nobody's place in line.
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