Grapefruit said:

What does this mean to you if anything?

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Quote:

Lot’s Wife
By Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn’t have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot’s neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn’t so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.
Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.
I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now–every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
I looked back in desolation.
In shame because we had stolen away.
Wanting to cry out, to go home.
Or only when a sudden gust of wind
unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.
It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom
and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.
I looked back in anger.
To savor their terrible fate.
I looked back for all the reasons given above.
I looked back involuntarily.
It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.
It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks.
A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge.
It was then we both glanced back.
No, no. I ran on,
I crept, I flew upward
until darkness fell from the heavens
and with it scorching gravel and dead birds.
I couldn’t breathe and spun around and around.
Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing.
It’s not inconceivable that my eyes were open.
It’s possible I fell facing the city.

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Icelander said:

Grapefruit said:

What does this mean to you if anything?

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Maybe he's saying that poems speak to the part of us that is wild, dangerous and untamed.

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That's precisely what got me suckered in to dating a poet

Grapefruit said:

Dating a poet feels dangerous huh?

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Dating a poet IS dangerous. They either kill you or themselves in the end.

Icelander said:

Grapefruit said:

What does this mean to you if anything?

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Maybe he's saying that poems speak to the part of us that is wild, dangerous and untamed.

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Blondell_Letrange said:

Grapefruit said:

Dating a poet feels dangerous huh?

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Dating a poet IS dangerous. They either kill you or themselves in the end.

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agonzalez64 said:

Good old Jimi Morrison, i heard him once said that he likes to think of poems as whatever you want them to be, they very subjective. Thats wah he said in one of his interviews. But i dont know what he means by that quote.

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