 |
|
|
 |
Click the
title of the poem you'd like read.
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
Comments about
Wislawa Szymborska
|
more comments >>
|
 |
Click here
to write your comments about
Wislawa Szymborska
|
Justaname Parer (5/14/2005 4:55:00 AM)
|
|
|
Hi,
I have also seen 'Any case' translated like this:
'Could have'
It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.
You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. On the left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.
You were in luck - there was a forest.
You were in luck - there were no trees.
You were in luck - a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant...
So you're here? Still dizzy from
another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or
speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.
Wislawa Szymborska, 'Could have', in View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems, trans. Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, Harcourt Brace & Company, New York,1996, pp.65-66.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"You survived because you were the first.
You survived because you were the last.
Because alone. Because the others.
Because on the left. Because on the right.
Because it was raining. Because it was sunny.
Because a shadow fell." |
|
Wislawa Szymborska (b. 1923), Polish poet. "Any Case," lines 6-11 (1948); tr. By Grazyna Drabik and Sharon Olds (1993).
Symborska, who has always lived in Poland, wrote a great deal of protest poetry during the Communist era.
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Whether you want it or not,
your genes have a political past,
your skin a political tone.
your eyes a political color.
...
you walk with political steps
on political ground." |
|
Wislawa Szymborska (b. 1923), Polish poet. "Children of the Epoch," lines 6-9, 14-15, translated by Grazyna Drabik and Austin Flint.
On Poland during the Communist era. I know that Symborska's first book of poetry was published in 1948, but I don't know whether this poem was in it. In any event, that book was attacked by her government and had to be withdrawn. Neither do I know the date of the translation.
|
|
Read more quotations >>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
People who read
Wislawa Szymborska
|
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
