The new year 2020 has a magic set of digits. It is bringing a unique awarness raising global campaign as the International Year of Plant Health. All this reminds me of the poem “Nothing twice” by Wislawa Szymborska.
Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.
Even if there is no one dumber,
if you’re the planet’s biggest dunce,
you can’t repeat the class in summer:
This course is only offered once.
No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with exactly the same kisses.
One day, perhaps, some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.
The next day, though you’re here with me,
I can’t help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?
Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It’s in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.
With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we’re different (we concur)
Just as two drops of water are.
Polish writer Wislawa Szymborska won the Nobel Prize in Literature 1996 “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.”
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1996. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2020.Thu. 2 Jan 2020. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1996/summary/>
Instead of reading: A song and video by Cindy Morris, a plant pathologist and researcher, who is another bright mind, inspired by non-chemical ways of protecting plant health and International Year of Plant Health. Worth listening…
Green Rules 