Even people who “don’t like poetry” seem to have a favourite poem. This is one of mine. It makes me smile and calls me to ponder my own preferences.
I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here
to many things I’ve also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.
By Wislawa Szymborska
From “Nothing Twice”, 1997
Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
Loved your preference of poem Joss.. Sending you Happy New Year Well wishes and I hope you share many more poems especially of your own.. xxx ❤
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Thank you. I will be sure to do that…more of my own poems. Happy 2018!
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I love Wislawa Symborska’s work. This is a terrific poem. I really like this line: I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
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She’s great, isn’t she? My favourite, of course is, I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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Will take several readings to absorb it all…that is the poem…if ever. I had to re-follow you because I did something in Google that erased all the blogs I followed :^(
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