The Number Pi/Liczba Pi: A Translation
Awe worthy number Pi
three point one four one
All her other numbers are also beginnings,
five nine two because it never ends
Doesn't let itself be held six five three five with a glance
eight nine by counting
seven nine with imagination,
and even three two three eight with a joke, which is with comparison
four six to anything
two six four three on earth.
The longest live snake breaks after a couple meters
supposedly, although a little later, so do fairytale snakes.
A string of numbers made of Pi
doesn't stop on the edge of the page,
can run along the table, through the air,
over the wall, leaf, bird's nest, clouds, straight into the sky,
across the heavens' abyss and endlessness.
O, how short, like a mouse tail, is the comet's braid!
How feeble the star's ray, that it even bends in space!
But here two three fifteen three hundred nineteen
my phone number your shirt size
the year one thousand nine hundred seventy three the sixth floor
the residents sixty five cents
the measure of the waist two fingers charade and cipher,
in which flies, crows my nightingale
and asks to preserve calm,
and the earth and sky will pass,
but not the number Pi, what it is will not,
she has another five,
not just some eight,
not lastly seven,
dragging, oh, dragging idle eternity
to survive.
-Written by Wislawa Szymborska
-Translated by Rory Evans