Some Like Poetry

By Wislawa Szymborska
Translated from Polish by Joanna Maria Trzeciak

Some--
that means not all.

Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting the schools, where one must,
and the poets themselves, there will be perhaps two in a thousand.

Like--
but one also likes chicken noodle soup,
one likes compliments and the color blue, one likes an old scarf,
one likes to prove one's point,
one likes to pet a dog.

Poetry--
but what sort of thing is poetry?
More than one shaky answer
has been given to this question.

But I do not know and do not know and clutch on to it,
as to a saving banister.

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