by Wislawa Szymborska
Out of every hundred people
those who always know better:
fifty-two.
Unsure of every step:
nearly all the rest.
Ready to help,
as long as it doesn't take long:
forty-nine.
Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four--well, maybe five.
Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.
Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.
Those not to be messed with:
forty and four.
Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.
Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.
Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.
Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it's better not to know
not even approximately.
Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.
Getting nothing out of life but things:
thirty
(although I would like to be wrong).
Doubled over in pain,
without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three,
sooner or later.
Those who are just:
quite a few at thirty-five.
But if it takes effort to understand:
three.
Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.
Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred--
a figure that has never varied yet.
trans. from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak
Art: Golconda by Rene Magritte
Elizabeth, many thanks for posting this. Stark, simple, profound, I find it far more powerful and riveting than this by W. H. Auden.
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure, Octo.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Auden's poem -- I've not seen it before.
They complement each other, these two -- Auden looks up close at one of those statistically insignificant lives, grouped together by Szymborska in one full hundred, and uncovers its muted horror (or banal misery -- not that there is much difference between the two):
Was he free? Was he Happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
Oh.
Bolshaya spaciba, Elizavyeta!
ReplyDelete(Russian's the closest I can come to Polish, I'm sorry to say. Izvinitya, pozhalsta.)
That's the only kind of statistics a dino can process -- poetical stats.
To add one adapted from Oscar Wilde's character Lord Henry Wotton, "Experience is the name 100% of us give to our mistakes."
Cała przyjemność po mojej stronie, Dino.
ReplyDeletePoetical stats make much more sense than the usual kind for (many) assorted humans, too. I say this from the perspective of my rich and varied experience. :)
Beautiful and better than Auden, IMO, who was being a bit cute for my taste. Fudge motors, indeed.
ReplyDeleteSay, when it rains Magrittes, is that evidence of global warming?
Glad you like it, Captain.
ReplyDeleteFudge Motors! -- I missed it (LOL). Well, times were different then, more verbose and sentimental, more rhyme-y and... fudgy.
About surrealists' effects on global warming: they are negligible. Scientists agree that Magritte rain is a result of periodically occurring oversaturated imagination.
But according to the Encyclopedia of the Unexplained, Weird, and Downright Ridiculous, raining Magrittes, along with the appearance of talking snakes and a mass exodus of idiots from their villages, is an unmistakable sign that the end of the world is near. Probably in 2012. Stay tuned to find out what it means for your weekend.