From whiskey river:
A Word on Statistics
Out of every hundred people,
those who always know better:
fifty-two.Unsure of every step:
almost all the rest.Ready to help,
if 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:
four-and-forty.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 except things:
thirty
(though I would like to be wrong).Balled up in pain
and without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three, sooner or later.Those who are just:
quite a few, thirty-five.But if it takes effort to understand:
three.Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred —
a figure that has never varied yet.
(Wislawa Szymborska; translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak [source])
…and:
One Hundred and Eighty Degrees
Have you considered the possibility
that everything you believe is wrong,
not merely off a bit, but totally wrong,
nothing like things as they really are?If you’ve done this, you know how durably fragile
those phantoms we hold in our heads are,
those wisps of thought that people die and kill for,
betray lovers for, give up lifelong friendships for.If you’ve not done this, you probably don’t understand this poem,
or think it’s not even a poem, but a bit of opaque nonsense,
occupying too much of your day’s time,
so you probably should stop reading it here, now.But if you’ve arrived at this line,
maybe, just maybe, you’re open to that possibility,
the possibility of being absolutely completely wrong,
about everything that matters.How different the world seems then:
everyone who was your enemy is your friend,
everything you hated, you now love,
and everything you love slips through your fingers like sand.
(Federico Moramarco)
The scene: the living room of a rustic but solidly built house in Vermont, with a gorgeous view spread beneath and a Green Mountainside above. It is a summer morning, and the sun is still low but bright and cheerful. The Guest and The Erstwhile Missus are there at the invitation of D—, a colleague of TEM; the two women teach at the same school, and are in the kitchen talking. 
