February 1st 2016

Wistawa Szymborska

was one of Poland's gifts to the literary world.
Ms. Szymborska won the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1996. She died on this day in 2012.

Read her work and you may recognize yourself--your

simple and complicated ponderings about life and  

humankind. Her poems are witty and wonderful and profound.

       Some poets honor other poets with a poem:

                     CONSIDERING THIS PICTURE

                                         (for W. SZYMBORSKA)

                      Lovely ageless woman

                      you are holding thin

                      fire in your hand,                                       

                      muted by the partial

                      light of seventy-eight years.

                      Smoke rises above

                      a violet turned gray.

                      In that small room,

                      which Leonardo said

                      disciplines the mind,

                      an open window.

                      You smile.                                     

                      And we on the journey know.

                                   

                                             -Kathleen Gunton

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