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All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.

Wislawa Szymborska

The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Hands Joy Mortal Perseverance Power Revenge Writing
I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Bone Myself Time
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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Choice Demand Loss Myself Rejection Way
Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune’s darlings.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Fortune Inspirational Place Poet Select
All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Easy Imperfection Service Small Tolerance
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

Angel Count Head Myself Sleep
When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Destroy Future Myself Past Silence Word
No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Feeling Good Morning Oneself
Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Land Life Scratch Time
After every war someone has to tidy up.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Clean Deep Hurt War
Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Better Knowledge People
Animals don’t even try to look any different from what nature intended. They humbly wear their shells, scales, spines, plumes, pelts, and down. The conscious impulse to change one’s appearance is found only among humans.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Animal Appearance Conscious Different Human Oneself Try
Poets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to set themselves above the common herd and the daily grind.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Common Poet Publish Reading Understand
God was finally going to believe in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Believe Different God Goodness Man Strong
Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Complication Nature Person
Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Cosmos End Space World

All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.

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All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.

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