Wislawa Szymborska - NOTHING IS GIVEN

Nothing is given, everything is borrowed

I am in debt up to my ears

I will have to pay for myself

With myself,

Pay for my life with my life.

It has been so arranged:

My heart will have to be repossessed

My liver will have to be repossessed,

And every one of my fingers as well.

Too late to tear up the contract;

My debts will be extracted from me

Together with my skin.

I am walking in this world

In a crowd of debtors

Some of whom will be forced

To pay off their wings,

Others, whether they like it or not

Will pay for their lives.

Everything is on loan

Every tissue in us

Not a single eyelash or leaf-stem

Will be kept for ever.

The account is very accurate

And it looks like

We'll be left with nothing.

I cannot recall

When where and why

I allowed to open this account

In my name

Our protest against it

Is called „soul”

It is the only item

Not in the register.

Translated by W.F.

Wislawa Szymborska (pron. Veeswavah Shimborskah) (1923 - 2012)

Born in a little town of Bnin near Poznan, she grew up and spent most of her life in Cracow. Unique among poets considered important today – during the era of Stalinist terror she wrote socialist-realist poems praising the socialist state and its communist leaders. She was also a member of the communist party, although in 1966 she left. She made her debut in 1952 with a book of her socialist-realist poems, and thus she cannot be considered a poet of the “Generation ‘56”. Later she became disillusioned with communism and supported the dissident movement. Her poetry was considered good, but not the world-class (as was the case of Milosz, Herbert and Rozewicz), therefore her Nobel Prize in 1996 was a big surprise to everybody. As it happens – the Nobel Prize changed the popular opinion and now she is considered one of the greatest Polish poets.