In 1991 she received the Goethe Prize, and later the Herder Prize. In 1996 she was awarded the Nobel Prize and in 2011 she received the Order of White Eagle from the Polish government. Her last volume of poetry “Here,” was published in the United States in 2011. In his review for the New York Times, poet Charles Simic wrote, "More than any poet I can think of, Szymborska not only wants to create a poetic state in her readers, but also to tell them things they didn’t know before or never got around to thinking about". Her sensitive approach to the unavoidable aspects of the physical world, combined with a keen sense of wit, sincerity and spirit, brought about some of the most significant works of poetry of the 20th century.

Source: PAP, Culture.pl

"Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me."(Sigmund Freud)

In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself

The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn’t know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they’d claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn’t understand remorse.
Lions and lice don’t waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they’re right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they’re light.

On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.

Water

A drop of water fell on my hand,

Blood-let from the Ganges and the Nile,

from the Ascension-day voyage off a seal’s whiskers to heaven,
from water out of the shattered pitchers in the cities of Y’s and Tyre.

On my index finger
the Caspian Sea is open

and the Pacific meekly joins the Rudawa,
that same stream that floated as a little cloud over Paris

in the year seven hundred and sixty-four
on the seventh of May at three in the morning.

There are not enough mouths to utter
all your fleeting names, O water.

I would have to name you in all tongues,
pronouncing all the vowels at once

while also keeping silent–for the sake of the lake
that waits to be named

and doesn’t exist on this earth, just as the star
reflected in it is not in heaven.

Somebody drowned, someone dying was
crying out for you. It was long ago and it was yesterday.

You have saved houses from fire, you have carried off houses
as you did trees, forests as cities.

You’ve been in christening fonts and courtesan’s baths.
In kisses and coffins.

Gnawing stone, nourishing rainbows,
in the sweat and the dew of the pyramids, the lilacs.

How light is all this in the raindrop.
How gently the world touches me.

Whatever, whenever, wherever has happened
Is written down on the waters of Babel.