Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings;
to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur;
to tell pain from everything it’s not;
to squeeze inside events, dawdle in views, to seek the least of all possible mistakes.
An extraordinary chance to remember for a moment a conversation held with the lamp switched off;
and if only once to stumble upon a stone, end up soaked in one downpour or another,
mislay your keys in the grass; and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes; and to keep on not knowing something important.
– by Wislawa Szymborska
And don’t miss her Nobel Lecture either.
6 Comments
nice :)
.. the yahoo group for poetry featured this. I loved the closing lines “to keep on not knowing something important”
I think blissful ignorance is not celebrated as much as it needs to be.
PS: My first post to you. Hi!
I usually jump between yearning ignorance after knowing too much, and wanting to know everything, consequences notwithstanding.
Strange, but I interpreted it quite differently — for me it conjured up that gnawing sensation of having an elusive bit of knowledge at the periphery of the vision, always disappearing when you try to focus (Robert Holdstock describes it much better, but in a different context, in the fantastic Mythago Wood — have you read it?).
Hello!
No, I haven’t chanced upon Mythago Wood yet. Is it still in print? I will look for it in the neighbourhood ‘pre-loved’ book store :-)
Apparently it still is in print. :)
The sequel, Lavondyss, was disappointing to the point of being unfinishable. Or maybe I’d been biased by a friend before hand. Whoops …
It’s gorgeous, Arun. I’m totally going to run it.