Remember When a Poet Refused to Lie for Power?

Her name was Wisława Szymborska.

She grew up in Poland under fascism and then communism — regimes that demanded loyalty, silence, and propaganda.

She gave them none of it.

Szymborska chose empathy over ideology, asking quiet, radical questions about war, truth, and the human soul.
She didn’t shout. She didn’t lecture.
She simply told the truth — even when it wasn’t safe to do so.

In 1996, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature — not for grand declarations, but for poems that saw the world clearly and refused to look away.

“We call it a grain of sand,
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine, without a name,
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
false, or true.”
— Wisława Szymborska

She reminded us that words matter. That naming matters.
That silence can be complicity — or resistance.
And that poetry can be protest.

🗳️ In a time of censorship, propaganda, and rising fear, we remember women like Szymborska — who used her voice when it mattered most, and believed in people when power did not.

Let’s honor her by using our own voices — and votes — just as bravely.

Photo credit: wwhitmanbooks.com