Art & Lies, Jeanette Winterson:

“Speak Parrot…In order to escape the arbitrary nature of existence I do what the artists do, and impose the most rigorous rules on myself, even if, inevitably, those rules are in turn arbitrary. Language, musical structure, colour and line, offer me a model of discipline out of their own disciplines. What liberties they take are for the sake of a more profound order, the rules they insist on are for the sake of freedom. How shall I learn to discipline myself if not by copying the best models? The paradox is that the artificial and often mechanical nature of the rules produces inexhaustible freedom, just as the harsh Rule of the early monasteries was designed to shut out every inessential, but to fully open spirit and mind.”

Wislawa Szymborska from "Starvation Camp Near Jaslo"

"Write it down. Write it. With
   ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they weren't
   given food,
they all died of hunger. All. How
   many?
It's a large meadow. How much
   grass
per head? Write down: I don't
   know.
History rounds off skeletons to
   zero.
A thousand and one is still only a
   thousand.
That one never seems to have 
   existed
a fictitious fetus, an empty cradle,
a primer opened for no one,
air that laughs, cries, grows,
stairs for avoid bounding out to
   the garden,
no one's spot in the ranks.


It became flesh right here, on this
   meadow.
But the meadow's silent, like a
   witness who has been bought..."

Wislawa Szymborska from "Starvation Camp Near Jaslo"

Wislawa Szymborska from "View with a Grain of Sand"

We call it a grain of sand,
but it calls itself neither grain nor
   sand.
It does just fine without a name,
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
incorrect, or apt.

Our glance, our touch mean
   nothing to it.
It doesn't feel itself  
   touched.
And that it fell on the windowsill
is only our experience, not its.
For it, it is no different from
   falling on anything else
with no assurance that it has
   finished falling
or that it is falling still.

portion of "View with a Grain of Sand", Wislawa Szymborska