Czeslaw Milosz

You who wronged a simple man Bursting into laughter at the crime, And kept a pack of fools around you To mix good and evil, to blur the line, Though everyone bowed down before you, Saying virtue and wisdom lit your way, Striking gold medals in your honor, Glad to have survived another day, Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date. And you’d have done better with a winter dawn, A rope, and a branch bowed beneath your weight. Washington, D.C., 1950

Come, Holy Spirit, bending or not bending the grasses, appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame, at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada. I am only a man: I need visible signs. I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction. Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church lifts its hand, only once, just once, for me. But I understand that signs must be human, therefore call one man, anywhere on earth, not me—after all I have some decency— and allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you. Berkely, 1961

No, it won’t do, my sweet theologians. Desire will not save the morality of God. If he created beings able to choose between good and evil, And they chose, and the world lies in iniquity, Nevertheless, there is pain, and the undeserved torture of creatures, Which would find its explanation only by assuming The existence of an archetypal Paradise And a pre-human downfall so grave That the world of matter received its shape from diabolic power.

On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net. Happy porpoises jump in the sea, By the rainspout young sparrows are playing And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be. On the day the world ends Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas, A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn, Vegetable peddlers shout in the street And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island, The voice of a violin lasts in the air And leads into a starry night. And those who expected lightning and thunder Are disappointed. And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps Do not believe it is happening now. As long as the sun and the moon are above, As long as the bumblebee visits a rose, As long as rosy infants are born No one believes it is happening now. Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy, Repeats while he binds his tomatoes: There will be no other end of the world, There will be no other end of the world. Warsaw, 1944

This happened long ago, before the onset of universal genetic correctness. Boys and girls would stand naked before mirrors studying the defects of their structure. Nose too long, ears like burdocks, sunken chin just like a mongoloid. Breasts too small, too large, lopsided shoulders, penis too short, hips too broad or else too narrow. And just an inch or two taller! Such was the house they inhabited for life. Hiding, feigning, concealing defects. But somehow they still had to find a partner. Following incomprehensible tastes—airy creatures paired with potbellies, skin and bones enamored of salt pork. They had a saying then: “Even monsters have their mates.” So perhaps they learned to tolerate their partners’ flaws, trusting that theirs would be forgiven in turn. Now every genetic error meets with such disgust that crowds might spit on them and stone them. As happened in the city of K., where the town council voted to exile a girl So thickset and squat that no stylish dress could ever suit her, But let’s not yearn for the days of prenormalization. Just think of the torments, the anxieties, the sweat, the wiles needed to entice, in spite of all. Translated by Clare Cavanagh

I don’t remember exactly when Budberg died, it was either two years ago or three. The same with Chen. Whether last year or the one before. Soon after our arrival, Budberg, gently pensive, Said that in the beginning it is hard to get accustomed, For here there is no spring or summer, no winter or fall. “I kept dreaming of snow and birch forests. Where so little changes you hardly notice how time goes by. This is, you will see, a magic mountain.” Budberg: a familiar name in my childhood. They were prominent in our region, This Russian family, descendants of German Balts. I read none of his works, too specialized. And Chen, I have heard, was an exquisite poet, Which I must take on faith, for he wrote in Chinese. Sultry Octobers, cool Julys, trees blossom in February. Here the nuptial flight of hummingbirds does not forecast spring. Only the faithful maple sheds its leaves every year. For no reason, its ancestors simply learned it that way. I sensed Budberg was right and I rebelled. So I won’t have power, won’t save the world? Fame will pass me by, no tiara, no crown? Did I then train myself, myself the Unique, To compose stanzas for gulls and sea haze, To listen to the foghorns blaring down below? Until it passed. What passed? Life. Now I am not ashamed of my defeat. One murky island with its barking seals Or a parched desert is enough To make us say: yes,oui, si. "Even asleep we partake in the becoming of the world.” Endurance comes only from enduring. With a flick of the wrist I fashioned an invisible rope, And climbed it and it held me. What a procession!Quelles délices! What caps and hooded gowns! Most respected Professor Budberg, Most distinguished Professor Chen, Wrong Honorable Professor Milosz Who wrote poems in some unheard-of tongue. Who will count them anyway. And here sunlight. So that the flames of their tall candles fade. And how many generations of hummingbirds keep them company As they walk on. Across the magic mountain. And the fog from the ocean is cool, for once again it is July. Berkeley, 1975

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a door opening in me and I entered the clarity of early morning. One after another my former lives were departing, like ships, together with their sorrow. And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas assigned to my brush came closer, ready now to be described better than they were before. I was not separated from people, grief and pity joined us. We forget—I kept saying—that we are all children of the King. For where we come from there is no division into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be. We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part of the gift we received for our long journey. Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago— a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel staving its hull against a reef—they dwell in us, waiting for a fulfillment. I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard, as are all men and women living at the same time, whether they are aware of it or not.

Human reason is beautiful and invincible. No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. It establishes the universal ideas in language, And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice With capital letters, lie and oppression with small. It puts what should be above things as they are, Is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope. It does not know Jew from Greek or slave from master, Giving us the estate of the world to manage. It saves austere and transparent phrases From the filthy discord of tortured words. It says that everything is new under the sun, Opens the congealed fist of the past. Beautiful and very young are Philo-Sophia And poetry, her ally in the service of the good. As late as yesterday Nature celebrated their birth, The news was brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo. Their friendship will be glorious, their time has no limit. Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction. Berkeley, 1968

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness. And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand. That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive, Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture. O my love, where are they, where are they going The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder. Wilno, 1936

You whom I could not save Listen to me. Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another. I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words. I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree. What strengthened me, for you was lethal. You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one, Inspiration of hatred with lyrical beauty; Blind force with accomplished shape. Here is a valley of shallow Polish rivers. And an immense bridge Going into white fog. Here is a broken city; And the wind throws the screams of gulls on your grave When I am talking with you. What is poetry which does not save Nations or people? A connivance with official lies, A song of drunkards whose throats will be cut in a moment, Readings for sophomore girls. That I wanted good poetry without knowing it, That I discovered, late, its salutary aim, In this and only this I find salvation. They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds. I put this book here for you, who once lived So that you should visit us no more. Warsaw, 1945