Wislawa Szymborska's "Astonishment," also translated as "Wonderment," is a simple, sixteen-line poem in which the poet asks a series of questions about why she exists in this world in the form that she does. The deeply philosophical poem poses ten questions about the human self, a person's place in the world, and the nature of existence, but it offers no answers to these puzzles. Rather, there is some suggestion that these metaphysical questions cannot be answered at all, and that the best response to the complex and inscrutable world is one of astonishment because the act of asking questions does not get one closer to unraveling the mysteries of existence