Selected Poems [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 211-216]

POETRY OF WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
211
monologue of an enemy of art: in his opinion, art subverts the order of the
world by trying to "stop time." In a reverse reflection of irony, such poems
reveal Szymborska's own convictions about the role of the artist in society.
The artist's task does not consist in showing the only right way, spreading
universal truths, or building utopias. It consists merely in "stopping time"and thus manifesting humanity's helpless but unending resistance against
the dark forces of nothingness.

SELECTED POEMS
Translated from Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
AN OPINION ON THE QUESTION OF PORNOGRAPHY
There's nothing more debauched than thinking.
This sort of wantonness runs wild like a wind-born weed
on a plot laid out for daisies.
Nothing's sacred for those who think.
Calling things brazenly by name,
risque analyses, salacious syntheses,
frenzied, rakish chases after the bare facts,
the filthy fingering of touchy subjects,
discussion in heat-it's music to their ears.
In broad daylight or under cover of the night
they form circles, triangles or pairs.
The partners' age and sex are unimportant.
Their eyes glitter, their cheeks are flushed.
Friend leads friend astray.
Degenerate daughters defile their fathers.
A brother panders for his little sister.
They favor the fruits
from the forbidden tree of knowledge
over the pink buttocks found in glossy magazinesall that ultimately simplehearted smut.
The books they savor have no pictures.
What variety they have lies in certain phrases
marked with a thumbnail or a crayon.