Czesław Miłosz

“I am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.”

“You see how I tryTo reach with wordsWhat matters mostAnd how I fail.”

“When everything was fineAnd the notion of sin had vanishedAnd the earth was readyIn universal peaceTo consume and rejoiceWithout creeds and utopias,I, for unknown reasons,Surrounded by the booksOf prophets and theologians,Of philosophers, poets,Searched for an answer,Scowling, grimacing,Waking up at night, muttering at dawn.What oppressed me so muchWas a bit shameful.Talking of it aloudWould show neither tact nor prudence.It might even seem an outrageAgainst the health of mankind. . .”

“He sang the brightness of mornings and green rivers,He sang of smoking water in the rose-colored daybreaks,Of colors: cinnabar, carmine, burnt sienna, blue,Of the delight of swimming in the sea under marble cliffs,Of feasting on a terrace above the tumult of a fishing port,Of tastes of wine, olive oil, almonds, mustard, salt.Of the flight of the swallow, the falcon,Of a dignified flock of pelicans above the bay,Of the scent of an armful of lilacs in summer rain,Of his having composed his words always against deathAnd of having made no rhyme in praise of nothingness.”

“When, as my friend suggested, I stand before Zeus (whether I die naturally, or under sentence of History)I will repeat all this that I have written as my defense.Many people spend their entire lives collecting stamps or old coins, or growing tulips. I am sure that Zius will be merciful toward people who have given themselves entirely to these hobbies, even though they are only amusing and pointless diversions. I shall say to him : "It is not my fault that you made me a poet, and that you gave me the gift of seeing simultaneously what was happening in Omaha and Prague, in the Baltic states and on the shores of the Arctic Ocean.I felt that if I did not use that gift my poetry would be tasteless to me and fame detestable. Forgive me." And perhaps Zeus, who does not call stamp-collectors and tulip-growers silly, will forgive.”

“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.”

“Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life. But now, we are witnessing a transformation, a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”

“Since poetry deals with the singular, not the general, it cannot - if it is good poetry - look at things of this earth other than as colorful, variegated, and exciting, and so, it cannot reduce life, with all its pain, horror, suffering, and ecstasy, to a unified tonality of boredom and complaint. By necessity poetry is therefore on the side of being and against nothingness.”

“I still think too much about the mothers And ask what is man born of woman. He curls himself up and protects his head While he is kicked by heavy boots; on fire and running, He burns with bright flame; a bulldozer sweeps him into a clay pit. Her child. Embracing a teddy bear. Conceived in ecstasy.”

“Of all things broken and lost, porcelain troubles me most.”

“When, after a long life, it falls outThat he takes on a form he had soughtAnd every word carved in stoneGrows its hoarfrost, what then? TorchesOf Dionysian choruses in the dark mountainsFrom when he comes. And half of the skyWith its snaky clouds. A mirror before him.In the mirror the already severed, perishingThing.”

“Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,I felt a door opening in me and I enteredthe 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 seasassigned 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 divisioninto Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth partof the gift we received for our long journey.Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago—a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirrorof 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.”

“All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.”

“No duties. I don’t have to be profound.I don’t have to be artistically perfect.Or sublime. Or edifying.I just wander. I say: ‘You were running,That’s fine. It was the thing to do.’And now the music of the worlds transforms me.My planet enters a different house.Trees and lawns become more distinct.Philosophies one after another go out.Everything is lighter yet not less odd.Sauces, wine vintages, dishes of meat.We talk a little of district fairs,Of travels in a covered wagon with a cloud of dust behind,Of how rivers once were, what the scent of calamus is.That’s better than examining one’s private dreams.And meanwhile it has arrived. It’s here, invisible.Who can guess how it got here, everywhere.Let others take care of it. Time for me to play hooky.Buena notte. Ciao. Farewell.”

“In Rome on the Campo dei FioriBaskets of olives and lemons,Cobbles spattered with wineAnd the wreckage of flowers.Vendors cover the trestlesWith rose-pink fish;Armfuls of dark grapesHeaped on peach-down.On this same squareThey burned Giordano Bruno.Henchmen kindled the pyreClose-pressed by the mob.Before the flames had diedThe taverns were full again,Baskets of olives and lemonsAgain on the vendors' shoulders.I thought of the Campo dei FioriIn Warsaw by the sky-carouselOne clear spring eveningTo the strains of a carnival tune.The bright melody drownedThe salvos from the ghetto wall,And couples were flyingHigh in the cloudless sky.At times wind from the burningWould drift dark kites alongAnd riders on the carouselCaught petals in midair.That same hot windBlew open the skirts of the girlsAnd the crowds were laughingOn that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.Someone will read as moralThat the people of Rome or WarsawHaggle, laugh, make loveAs they pass by martyrs' pyres.Someone else will readOf the passing of things human,Of the oblivionBorn before the flames have died.But that day I thought onlyOf the loneliness of the dying,Of how, when GiordanoClimbed to his burningThere were no wordsIn any human tongueTo be left for mankind,Mankind who live on.Already they were back at their wineOr peddled their white starfish,Baskets of olives and lemonsThey had shouldered to the fair,And he already distancedAs if centuries had passedWhile they paused just a momentFor his flying in the fire.Those dying here, the lonelyForgotten by the world,Our tongue becomes for themThe language of an ancient planet.Until, when all is legendAnd many years have passed,On a great Campo dei FioriRage will kindle at a poet's word.”

“The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.”

“And when people cease to believe that there is good and evil,Only beauty will call to them and save themSo that they will know how to say: this is true and that is false.”

“All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.”

“It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.”

“Language is the only homeland.”

“—Most distinguished voyager, what was your eon like?—Comic. Terror is forgotten.Only the ridiculous is remembered by posterity.Death from a wound, from a noose, from starvationIs one death, but folly is uncounted and new every year.”

“1. That reason is a gift of God and that we should believe in its ability to comprehend the world.2. That they have been wrong who undermined confidence in reason by enumerating the forces that want to usurp it: class struggle, libido, will to power.3. That we should be aware that our being is enclosed within the circle of its perceptions, but not reduce reality to dreams and the phantoms of the mind.4. That truth is a proof of freedom and that the sign of slavery is the lie.5. That the proper attitude toward being is respect and that we must, therefore, avoid the company of people who debase being with their sarcasm, and praise nothingness.6. That, even if we are accused of arrogance, it is the case that in the life of the mind a strict hierarchy is necessary.7. That intellectuals in the twentieth century were afflicted with the habit of baratin, i.e., irresponsible jabber.8. That in the hierarchy of human activities the arts stand higher than philosophy, and yet bad philosophy can spoil art.9. That the objective truth exists; namely, out of two contrary assertions, one is true, one false, except in strictly defined cases when maintaining contradiction is legitimate.10. That quite independently of the fate of religious denominations we should preserve a "philosophical faith," i.e., a belief in transcendence as a measure of humanity.11. That time excludes and sentences to oblivion only those works of our hands and minds which prove worthless in raising up, century after century, the huge edifice of civilization.12. That in our lives we should not succumb to despair because of our errors and our sins, for the past is never closed down and receives the meaning we give it by our subsequent acts.”

“The true enemy of man is generalization.”

“Forget the sufferingYou caused others.Forget the sufferingOthers caused you.The waters run and run,Springs sparkle and are done,You walk the earth you are forgetting.Sometimes you hear a distant refrain.What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?A childlike sun grows warm.A grandson and a great-grandson are born.You are led by the hand once again.The names of the rivers remain with you.How endless those rivers seem!Your fields lie fallow,The city towers are not as they were.You stand at the threshold mute.”

“He returns years later, has no demands.He wants only one, most precious thing:To see, purely and simply, without name,Without expectations, fears, or hopes,At the edge where there is no I or not-I.”

“In a room wherepeople unanimously maintaina conspiracy of silence,one word of truthsounds like a pistol shot.”

“The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.”

“She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.”

“To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.”