POETRY
INSPIRATION
Wisława SZYMBORSKA
Polish Poet | 1923-2012
Conversation with stone
I knock at the stone door
“It’s me, let me in.
I come to see you, to visit you
feel your breath”
“Go away, says the stone
I am locked.
Even broken into pieces
we will always remain closed,
even reduced to sand
we won’t let anyone in.”
I knock at the door of the stone.
“It’s me, let me in.
I come out of simple curiosity
and life is the only opportunity.
I would just like to walk through your palace
before going to visit the leaf and the drop.
I don’t have much time
because I only have one life.
– I am made of stone, says the stone.
I have to be serious. Go away,
You can see that I don’t have the muscles to laugh.
I knock at the stone door
– It’s me, let me in.
They say there are big empty rooms in your house.
majestic and without footsteps
that no one has ever seen.
Admit that you don’t know them yourself.
-Large empty rooms it’s true
but there is no room, says the stone.
Beautiful, perhaps
but not of perceptible beauty to your senses.
You can know me, but you can never know me.
You see me in appearance but not in my essence
I knock at the stone door
– It’s me, let me in.
I promise I won’t stay at your place for long.
nor take refuge
I am not unhappy and I have a home.
Besides, the world is worth going back to.
I’ll go into your house and come out empty-handed.
without touching anything.
As proof of my visit
I will write only a few words
and besides, nobody will believe me.
– You will not go in, said the stone.
You have no sense of sharing
and no other sense can replace it
not even the clairvoyance of the beyond.
You will not enter,
you don’t know about sharing
you only have a distant image of it.
I knock at the stone door
– It’s me, let me in.
I can’t wait two thousand centuries
to come to your house.
– If you don’t believe me, says the stone
ask the leaf, it will tell you the same thing,
and the drop of water will tell you like the leaf.
You can even ask a hair of your head, if you want.
You make me laugh. With an immense burst of laughter
as if I had learned to laugh.
I knock at the door of the stone
– It’s me, let me in.
– I don’t have a door, said the stone.
Georges S
Cyanography by Azul LOEVE
Wisława SZYMBORSKA
Poem published in 1957 | Traduction by Aaron
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Wislawa SZYMBORSKA on Wikipédia
