Anna Kamieńska (12 April 1920 in Krasnystaw – 10 May 1986 in Warsaw) was a Polish poet, writer, translator and literary critic who wrote many books for children and adolescents.
There are things better left untouched by words.
Letters of the condemned. Last words scratched on a cell’s wall. To write like that.
Writing down your thoughts is both necessary and harmful. It leads to eccentricity, narcissism, preserves what should be let go. On the other hand, these notes intensify the inner life, which, left unexpressed, slips through your fingers. If only I could find a better kind of journal, humbler, one that would preserve the same thoughts, the same flesh of life, which is worth saving.
I write in order to comprehend, not to express myself.
The way a source strains toward the light, toward the air. Its laboring work, its effort, its black passageways like despair. That’s the way a poet looks for words. With muscles, gestures.
This morning I suddenly catch myself: I'm not there, I'm so lost in thought, I don't know what's going on around me. Can you think yourself to death?
I’m moved by everything broken and crippled. Since that’s how we really are.
I am that which lies beyond time. Like a melody, which sounds completely only after the last note is played.
I’ve learned to value failed conversations, missed connections, confusions. What remains is what’s unsaid, what’s underneath. Understanding on another level of being.
Even a painful longing is some form of presence.
My poems are more my silence than my speech. Just as music is a kind of quiet. Sounds are needed only to unveil the various layers of silence.
We cling to words like drowning men to straws. But still we drown, we drown.
I don’t write poetry when I wish, I write when I can’t, when my larynx is flooded and my throat is shut.
Where your pain is, there your heart lies also.
Tell me what's the difference
I have no talent. I write poems for myself, to think things through, that’s all.
Tell me what’s the difference between hope and waiting because my heart doesn’t know It constantly cuts itself on the glass of waiting It constantly gets lost in the fog of hope
Poetry is a presentiment of the truth.
I returned to confirm there can be no return.