Wislawa Szymborska is a Polish poet who won the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize in Literature “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.”I love her poem below "A Word on Statistics” that was translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak.
Out of every hundred people
those who always know better:
fifty-two.
Unsure of every step:
nearly all the rest.
Ready to help,
as long as it doesn’t take long:
forty-nine.
Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four --well, maybe five.
Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.
Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.
Those not to be messed with:
forty and four.
Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.
Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.
Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.
Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it’s better not to know
not even approximately.
Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.
Getting nothing out of life but things:
thirty
(although I would like to be wrong).
Those who are just:
quite a few at thirty-five.
But if it takes effort to understand:
three
Words of empathy:
ninety-nine.
Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred - -
a figure that has never varied yet.
