Wislawa Szymborska

Thoughts That Visit Me on Busy Streets

Faces.

Billions of faces on the earth's surface.

Each different, so we're told,

from those that have been and will be.

But Nature—since who really understands her?—

may grow tired of her ceaseless labors

and so repeats earlier ideas

by supplying us

with preworn faces.

Those passersby might be Archimedes in jeans,

Catherine the Great draped in resale,

some pharaoh with briefcase and glasses.

Billions of faces on the earth's surface.

My face, yours, whose—

you'll never know.

Maybe Nature has to shortchange us,

and to keep up, meet demand,

she fishes up what's been sunk

in the mirror of oblivion.

Qaddafi

Gene Simmons

Holland Taylor

Jane Fonda