Frases de Wisława Szymborska

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“Ningún día se repite,
ni dos noches son iguales,
ni dos besos parecidos
ni dos citas similares.”

“Soñamos, ¡pero tan negligentemente, tan a la ligera! «Quiero ser un pájaro», dice este o aquel. Pero si el sumiso destino lo convirtiese en un pavo, se sentiría desencantado.”

“¿Y si todo esto sucede en un laboratorio? ¿Bajo sólo una lámpara de día y miles de millones por la noche?”

“El cielo está en todas partes, incluso en la oscuridad bajo la piel. Me alimento de cielo, evacuo cielo. Soy una trampa en la trampa, un habitante habitado, un brazo abrazado, una pregunta en respuesta a una pregunta.”

“Las aves domésticas se distinguen de las de corral en que las guardamos en jaulas exclusivamente para satisfacer el placer estético. El nuestro, claro. Del placer que sienten las aves condenadas a ver a sus dueños, no sé nada.”

“La vida dura unos cuantos rasguños en la arena”

“Y helo aquí: en un estado indeporable, el escarabajo muerto en el sendero resplandece bajo el sol. El tiempo de una mirada basta para pensar en él: no le ha ocurrido nada importante, parece.

Lo importante, dicen, es lo que nos atañe a nosotros. La vida, pero solo nuestra, o la muerte, pero también sólo nuestra, una muerte que así goza de su obligada primacía.”

“Buscar sinceridad en unas memorias carece de sentido. Mejor sería preguntarse qué versión de uno mismo y del mundo ha escogido el autor, dado que siempre hay posibilidad de elegir.”

“No carece de encantos un mundo tan terrible, no carece de madrugadas que merecen un despertar.”

“soy una persona anticuada que cree que leer libros es el pasatiempo más hermoso que la humanidad ha creado.”

“Estar en casa es tremendamente peligroso. A cada paso que damos hay peligro de muerte o mutilación. Incluso me atrevería a decir que cuantas más comodidades civilizadoras guardamos en casa, mayores son las posibilidades de que nos suceda una catástrofe. Vivir en una caverna era más seguro que todo eso, claro, siempre y cuando no irrumpiera en ella un tigre dientes de sable en ausencia de la gente que se encargaba de cazar.”

“Me parece que solo será a partir de la próxima generación cuando caminar se convierta en algo vanguardista.”

“En el tercer planeta del sol la conciencia limpia y tranquila es síntoma primordial de animalidad.”

“Un milagro tan adicional como adicional es todo: lo impensable se puede pensar.”

“Cierta gente huyendo de otra gente.
En cierto país bajo el sol
y bajo ciertas nubes.”

“No he vivido más que tú, sino sólo lo bastante para pensar de lejos.”

“Tuve yo razón. Pero la razón no da fruto.
Y estas son mis vestimentas chamuscadas por el fuego.
Y estos son mis trebejos de vidente.
Y este es mi rostro desfigurado.
Un rostro que pudo ser hermoso y no lo supo.”

“Así, por obra del azar, soy y miro. Una mariposa blanca aletea en el aire con alas que sólo a ella pertenecen, y una sombra sobrevuela mi mano, la suya, no otra, no de cualquiera. Ante hechos semejantes me abandona la certeza de que lo importante es más importante que lo que no importa.”

“Tengo un poema sobre el odio, que es verdaderamente un sentimiento del siglo XX, el más fuerte, el que encuentra más seguidores. Y eso es algo horrible. Quizá en algún momento fue necesario pero ahora el odio es un sentimiento horrible. Aunque parece más fácil que un loco propague sus ideas con los nuevos medios. Antes, alguien llegaba y se subía a un cajón en una plaza y se ponía a hablar con un megáfono… Todo era más pequeño.”

“Mi lengua es una lengua viva. Utilizo frases hechas, lengua coloquial, juegos de palabras, que no necesariamente funcionan en otras lenguas… La suerte de los poetas en el exterior depende de los traductores.”

“El hombre se somete a diversas ideas de grupo y no siempre es bueno.”

“For the sake of research,
the big picture
and definitive conclusions,
one would have to transcend time,
in which everything scurries and whirls.”

“I shake my memory.
Maybe something in its branches
that has been asleep for years
will start up with a flutter.No.
Clearly I'm asking too much.
Nothing less than one whole second.”

“There's nothing more debauched than thinking.”

“I believe in the refusal to take part.
I believe in the ruined career.
I believe in the wasted years of work.
I believe in the secret taken to the grave.”

“Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different.
Or a little bit different — which is to say, completely different.”

“Toy balloon
once kidnapped by the wind —
come home, and I will say:
There are no children here.”

“So he's got to have happiness,
he's got to have truth, too,
he's got to have eternity —
did you ever!”

“"There's nothing new under the sun": that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun. And the poem you created is also new under the sun, since no one wrote it down before you. And all your readers are also new under the sun, since those who lived before you couldn't read your poem. And that cypress under which you're sitting hasn't been growing since the dawn of time. It came into being by way of another cypress similar to yours, but not exactly the same.”

“We're extremely fortunate
not to know precisely
the kind of world we live in.
One would have
to live a long, long time,
unquestionably longer
than the world itself.”

“Yes, the memory still moves her.
Yes, just a little tired now. Yes, it will pass.
You may get up. Thank her. Say good-bye. Leave,
passing by the new arrivals in the hall.”

“On this third planet from the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.”

“Born.
So he was born, too.
Born like everyone else.
Like me, who will die.
The son of an actual woman.
A new arrival from the body's depths.
A voyager to Omega.”

“He feels like a handle broken off a jug,
but the jug doesn't know it's broken and keeps going to the well.”

“He managed to come into the world at what was still a fitting time.
All that was to pass passed in this house.
Not in housing projects,
not in furnished but empty quarters,
among unknown neighbors
on fifteenth floors
that student field trips rarely reach.”

“Yes, she loved him very much. Yes, he was born that way.
Yes, she was standing by the prison wall that morning.
Yes, she heard the shots.
You may regret not having brought a camera,
a tape recorder. Yes, she has seen such things.”

“The counting of weekdays
would inevitably seem to be
a senseless activity;
dropping letters in the mailbox
a whim of foolish youth;
the sign "No Walking On The Grass"
a symptom of lunacy.”

“They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway.”

“Secret codes resound.
Doubts and intentions come to light.”

“If there are angels
they must, I hope,
find this convincing,
this merriment dangling from terror,
not even crying Save me Save me
since all of this takes place in silence.”

“My siblings died the day I left for dry land
and only one small bone recalls that anniversary in me.”

“I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.""I don't have a door," says the stone.”

“Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.”

“God was finally going to believe
in a man both good and strong,
but good and strong
are still two different men.”

“They aren't obliged to vanish when we're gone.
They don't have to be seen while sailing on.”

“And who's this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe?
That's tiny baby Adolf, the Hitlers' little boy!”

“My dreams — even they're not as populous as they should be.
They hold more solitude than noisy crowds.”

“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.”

“And only we few who remain unstripped of fur,
untorn from bone, unplucked of soaring feathers,
esteemed in all our quills, scales, tusks, and horns,
and in whatever else that ingenious protein
has seen fit to clothe us with,
we, my lord, are your dream,
which finds you innocent for now.”

“My cry could only waken him. And what
a poor gift: I, confined to my own form,
when I used to be a birch, a lizard
shedding times and satin skins
in many shimmering hues.”