CZESLAW MILOSZ ~

Notebook: Bons By Lake Leman

Red beeches, shining poplars

And steep spruce behind October fog.

In the valley the lake steams. There is snow

Already on the hillsides of the other shore.

Of life, what remains? Only this light

So that the eyes blink in the sunny noon

Of such a season. People say: this is,

And no capacity, no artfulness

Can reach beyond what is.

And memory, useless, loses its power.

Kegs smell of cider. The vicar mixes lime

With a spade in front of the school.

My son runs there on the path. Boys carry

Sacks of chestnuts gathered on the slope.

If I forget thee, Jerusalem,

Says the prophet, let my right hand wither.

Underground tremors shake what is.

Mountains crack and forests break.

Touched by what was and what will be,

All that is crumbles into dust.

Violent, clean, the world is again in ferment

And neither ambition nor memory ceases.

Autumnal skies, the same in childhood,

In adulthood and old age. I won't

Stare at you. And you, landscapes,

Nourishing our hearts with mild warmth,

What poison dwells in you that you seal our lips,

Makes us sit with folded arms and the look

Of sleepy animals? Whoever finds order,

Peace, and an eternal moment in what is

Will vanish without a trace. Do you agree then

To abolish what is, and pluck from movement

The eternal moment as a gleam

On the current of the black river? I do.

— Bons, 1953

____________________________

Czeslaw Milosz

Poet in the New World

Poems, 1946-1953

TRANSLATED BY ROBERT HASS AND DAVID FRICK

Ecco, 2025

RE-READING MIRON BIALOSZEWSKI ~

     

A Ballad of Going Down To The Store



First I went down to the street

by means of the stairs,

just imagine it,

by means of the stairs.



Then people known to people unknown

passed me by and I passed them by.

Regret

that you did not see

how people walk,

regret!



I entered a complete store:

lamps of glass were glowing.

I saw somebody — he sat down —

and what did I hear? what did I hear?

rustling of bags and human talk.



And indeed,

indeed,

I returned.





____________________
translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz

CZESLAW MILOSZ ~

I AM HERE ~

One More Contradiction



Did I fulfill what I had to, here, on earth?

I was a guest in a house under white clouds

Where rivers flow and grasses renew themselves.

So what if I were called, if I was hardly aware.

The next time early I would search for wisdom.

I would not pretend I could be just like others:

Only evil and suffering come from that.

Renouncing, I would choose the fate of obedience.

I would suppress my wolf's eye and greedy throat.

A resident of some cloister floating in the air

With a view on the cities glowing below,

Or onto a stream, a bridge and old cedars,

I would give myself to one task only

Which then, however, could not be accomplished.




________________________

Czeslaw Milosz


New and Collected Poems
(1931-2001)
Ecco

Terrence Des Pres, writing in the Nation, stated that "political catastrophe has defined the nature of our . . . [age], and the result—the collision of personal and public realms—has produced a new kind of writer. Czeslaw Milosz is the perfect example. In exile from a world which no longer exists, a witness to the Nazi devastation of Poland and the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, Milosz deals in his poetry with the central issues of our time: the impact of history upon moral being, the search for ways to survive spiritual ruin in a ruined world."

 Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980, Czeslaw Milosz was born in 1911 in Lithuania where his parents had moved to escape the political upheaval in their native Poland — the poet later left Poland himself due to the Communist regime that swept to power following WW2. He eventually settled in the United States in 1960 and became an American citizen in 1970. For decades he taught at the University of California Berkeley. His books of poetry, prose and historical importance took awhile to be known in the US, but now they are more than secure.

photo : AKG Images / East News