Czeslaw Milosz

Campo di Fiori

In Rome on the Campo di Fiori Baskets of olives and lemons, Cobbles spattered with wine And the wreckage of flowers. Vendors cover the trestles With rose-pink fish; Armfuls of dark grapes Heaped on

Burning, he walks in the stream of flickering letters, clarinets, Machines throbbing quicker than the heart, lopped-off heads, silk Canvases, and he stops under the sky And raises toward it his joined clenched fists.

Not Mine

All my life to pretend this world of theirs is mine And to know such pretending is disgraceful. But what can I do? Suppose I suddenly screamed And started to prophesy. No one would

Window

I looked out the window at dawn and saw a young apple tree Translucent in brightness. And when I looked out at dawn once again, an apple tree laden with Fruit stood there. Many

Meaning

When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset. The true meaning, ready to be decoded. What never added up will add Up, What was

Conversation with Jeanne

Let us not talk philosophy, drop it, Jeanne. So many words, so much paper, who can stand it. I told you the truth about my distancing myself. I’ve stopped worrying about my misshapen life.

Love

Love means to learn to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many. And whoever sees that way heals his heart, Without knowing it,

Father Explains

“There where that ray touches the plain And the shadows escape as if they really ran, Warsaw stands, open from all sides, A city not very old but quite famous. “Farther, where strings of

In Black Despair

In grayish doubt and black despair, I drafted hymns to the earth and the air, Pretending to joy, although I lacked it. The age had made lament redundant. So here’s the question who can

Lake

Maidenly lake, fathomless lake, Stay as you were once, overgrown with rushes, Idling with a reflected cloud, for my sake Whom your shore no longer touches. Your girl was always real to me. Her

On Angels

All was taken away from you: white dresses, Wings, even existence. Yet I believe you, Messengers. There, where the world is turned inside out, A heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts, You stroll,

Study Of Loneliness

A guardian of long-distance conduits in the desert? A one-man crew of a fortress in the sand? Whoever he was. At dawn he saw furrowed mountains The color of ashes, above the melting darkness,

On Prayer

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not. All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard, Above landscapes the

Child of Europe

1 We, whose lungs fill with the sweetness of day. Who in May admire trees flowering Are better than those who perished. We, who taste of exotic dishes, And enjoy fully the delights of

A Hall

The road led straight to the temple. Notre Dame, though not Gothic at all. The huge doors were closed. I chose one on the side, Not to the main building-to its left wing, The

Account

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes. Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness, Like the flight of a moth which, had it known, Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle’s

Incantation

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

A Poem For the End of the Century

When everything was fine And the notion of sin had vanished And the earth was ready In universal peace To consume and rejoice Without creeds and utopias, I, for unknown reasons, Surrounded by the

Unde Malum

Where does evil come from? It comes From man Always from man Only from man – Tadeusz Rozewicz Alas, dear Tadeusz, Good nature and wicked man Are romantic inventions You show us this way

Forget

Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting. Sometimes you hear a distant

Ars Poetica?

I have always aspired to a more spacious form That would be free from the claims of poetry or prose And would let us understand each other without exposing The author or reader to

Encounter

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

Dedication

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

I Sleep a Lot

I sleep a lot and read St. Thomas Aquinas Or The Death of God (that’s a Protestant book). To the right the bay as if molten tin, Beyond the bay, city, beyond the city,

Song on the End of the World

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

A Task

In fear and trembling, I think I would fulfill my life Only if I brought myself to make a public confession Revealing a sham, my own and of my epoch: We were permitted to

Magpiety

The same and not quite the same, I walked through oak forests Amazed that my Muse, Mnemosyne, Has in no way diminished my amazement. A magpie was screeching and I said: Magpiety? What is

Woe!

It is true, our tribe is similar to the bees, It gathers honey of wisdom, carries it, stores it in honeycombs. I am able to roam for hours Through the labyrinth of the main

At a Certain Age

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers. White clouds refused to accept them, and the wind Was too busy visiting sea after sea. We did not succeed in interesting the

What Does It Mean

It does not know it glitters It does not know it flies It does not know it is this not that. And, more and more often, agape, With my Gauloise dying out, Over a

Statue of a Couple

Your hand, my wonder, is now icy cold. The purest light of the celestial dome Has burned me through. And now we are As two still plams lying in darlmess, As two black banks

Late Ripeness

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,

And Yet The Books

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings, That appeared once, still wet As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn, And, touched, coddled, began to live In spite of