Hidalgo Socorro
Hidalgo Socorro - Wisława Szymborska
Wisława Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist and translator. She received the Nobel Prize on Literature in 1996. Symborska was born on July 2, 1923 in Prowent, Poland, and grew up in the city of Krakow. After the war, she studied Polish literature and then changed to Sociology. She published her first poem in March 1945, “Szukam słowa” (“Looking for a word”) in a daily newspaper.
Symborska married only once, to the poet Adam Włodek, who she divorced in 1954. She used literary devices such as irony, paradox, contradiction and understatement to talk about philosophical themes and obsessions. Symborska died on February 1st, 2012 at the age of 88.
For more information, Hidalgo Socorro recommends you to visit: Wisława Szymborska
Some Like Poetry
Write it. Write. In ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they were given no food,
they all died of hunger. “All. How many?
It’s a big meadow. How much grass
for each one?” Write: I don’t know.
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,
an ABC never read,
air that laughs, cries, grows,
emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
nobody’s place in the line.
We stand in the meadow where it became flesh,
and the meadow is silent as a false witness.
Sunny. Green. Nearby, a forest
with wood for chewing and water under the bark-
every day a full ration of the view
until you go blind. Overhead, a bird-
the shadow of its life-giving wings
brushed their lips. Their jaws opened.
Teeth clacked against teeth.
At night, the sickle moon shone in the sky
and reaped wheat for their bread.
Hands came floating from blackened icons,
empty cups in their fingers.
On a spit of barbed wire,
a man was turning.
They sang with their mouths full of earth.
“A lovely song of how war strikes straight
at the heart.” Write: how silent.
“Yes.”
Hidalgo Socorro 