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MILOSZ, Czeslaw



Campo dei Fiori


In Rome on the Campo dei 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 peach-down.


On this same square

they burned Giordano Bruno.

Henchmen kindled the pyre

close-pressed by the mob.

Before the flames had died

the taverns were full again,

baskets of olives and lemons

again on the vendors' shoulders.


I thought of the Campo dei Fiori

in Warsaw by the sky-carousel

one clear spring evening

to the strains of a carnival tune.

The bright melody drowned

the salvos from the ghetto wall,

and couples were flying

high in the cloudless sky.


At times wind from the burning

would drift dark kites along

and riders on the carousel

caught petals in midair.

That same hot wind

blew open the skirts of the girls

and the crowds were laughing

on that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.


Someone will read as moral

that the people of Rome or Warsaw

haggle, laugh, make love

as they pass by the martyrs' pyres.

Someone else will read

of the passing of things human,

of the oblivion

born before the flames have died.


But that day I thought only

of the loneliness of the dying,

of how, when Giordano

climbed to his burning

he could not find

in any human tongue

words for mankind,

mankind who live on.


Already they were back at their wine

or peddled their white starfish,

baskets of olives and lemons

they had shouldered to the fair,

and he already distanced

as if centuries had passed

while they paused just a moment

for his flying in the fire.


Those dying here, the lonely

forgotten by the world,

our tongue becomes for them

the language of an ancient planet.

Until, when all is legend

and many years have passed,

on a new Campo dei Fiori

rage will kindle at a poet's word.



Song of a Citizen


A stone from the bottom, who has seen the seas dry up

And a million white fish leaping in torture,

I – poor man, see swarms of white denuded people

Without freedom, I see the crab which feeds on their flesh.


I have seen the fall of states and the destruction of peoples,

The flight of kings and emperors, the power of tyrants,

I can say now, in this hour,

That I – am, although everything perishes,

That it is better to be a live dog than a dead lion

As Scripture says.


I am a poor man, sitting on a cold chair, with eyelids pressed,

I sigh and think about the starry sky,

About non-euclidean space, the amoeba and its pseudopodia,

About the tall mounds of termites.


When I walk I am asleep, when I sleep I am awake,

I run, hunted and covered with sweat,

On city squares which the dawn paints garish colours,

Beneath the marble remnant of smashed gates,

I deal in vodka and gold.


And yet I was often so near,

I reached into the heart of metal, the soul of earth and fire, and of water,

And the unknown unveiled its face

As the quiet night reveals itself, mirrored in a stream

I was greeted by lustrous copper-leaved gardens.


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 animals.

Dogs, disappointed, expected an order,

A cat, as always immoral, was falling asleep.

A person seemingly very close

Did not care to hear of things long past.

Conversations with friends over vodka or coffee

Ought not be prolonged beyond the first sign of boredom.

It would be humiliating to pay by the hour

A man with a diploma, just for listening.

Churches. Perhaps churches. But to confess there what?

That we used to see ourselves as handsome and noble

Yet later in our place an ugly toad

Half-opens its thick eyelid

And one sees clearly: "That's me.


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 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.



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 incomprehensible will be comprehended.

- And if there is no lining to the world?

If a thrush on a branch is not a sign,

But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day

Make no sense following each other?

And on this earth there is nothing except this earth?

- Even if that is so, there will remain

A word wakened by lips that perish,

A tireless messenger who runs and runs

Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies,

And calls out, protests, screams.



A 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 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:

No other end of the world will there be,

No other end of the world will there be.


A 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.

It was no better and no worse than the usual human tragedies.


For over thirty years we have been waging our dispute

As we do now, on the island under the skies of the tropics.

We flee a downpour, in an instant the bright sun again,

And I grow dumb, dazzled by the emerald essence of the leaves.


We submerge in foam at the line of the surf,

We swim far, to where the horizon is a tangle of banana bush,

With little windmills of palms.

And I am under accusation: That I am not up to my oeuvre,

That I do not demand enough from myself,

As I could have learned from Karl Jaspers,

That my scorn for the opinions of this age grows slack.


I roll on a wave and look at white clouds.


You are right, Jeanne, I don't know how to care about the salvation of my soul.

Some are called, others manage as well as they can.

I accept it, what has befallen me is just.

I don't pretend to the dignity of a wise old age.

Untranslatable into words, I chose my home in what is now,

In things of this world, which exist and, for that reason, delight us:

Nakedness of women on the beach, coppery cones of their breasts,

Hibiscus, alamanda, a red lily, devouring

With my eyes, lips, tongue, the guava juice, the juice of la prune de Cythère,

Rum with ice and syrup, lianas-orchids

In a rain forest, where trees stand on the stilts of their roots.


Death, you say, mine and yours, closer and closer,

We suffered and this poor earth was not enough.

The purple-black earth of vegetable gardens

Will be here, either looked at or not.

The sea, as today, will breathe from its depths.

Growing small, I disappear in the immense, more and more free.


A Book in the Ruins


A dark building. Crossed boards, nailed up, create

A barrier at the entrance, or a gate

When you go in. Here, in the gutted foyer,

The ivy snaking down the walls is wire

Dangling. And, over there, the twisted metal

Columns rising from the undergrowth of rubble

Are tattered tree trunks. This could be the brick

Of the library, you don't know yet, or the sick

Grove of dry white aspen where, stalking birds,

You met a Lithuanian dusk stirred

From its silence only by the wails of hawks.

Now walk carefully. You see whole blocks

Of ceiling caved in by a recent blast.

And above, through jagged tiers of plaster,

A patch of blue. Pages of books lying

Scattered at your feet are like fern-leaves hiding

A moldy skeleton, or else fossils

Whitened by the secrets of Jurassic shells.

A remnant life so ancient and unknown

Compels a scientist, tilting a stone

Into the light, to wonder. He can't know

Whether it is some dead epoch's shadow

Or a living form. He looks again

At chalk spirals eroded by the rain,

The rust of tears. Thus, in a book picked up

From the ruins, you see a world erupt

And glitter with its distant sleepy past,

Green times of creatures tumbled to the vast

Abyss and backward: the brows of women,

An earring fixed with trembling hand, pearl button

On a glove, candelabra in the mirror.

The lanterns have been lit. A first shiver

Passes over the instruments. The quadrille

Begins to curl, subdued by the rustle

Of big trees swaying in the formal park.

She slips outside, her shawl floating in the dark,

And meets him in a bower overgrown

With vines, They sit close on a bench of stone

And watch the lanterns glowing in the jasmine.

Or here, this stanza: you hear a goose pen

Creak, the butterfly of an oil lamp

Flutters slowly over scrolls and parchment,

A crucifix, bronze busts. The lines complain

In plangent rhythms, that desire is vain.

Here a city rises. In the market square

Signboards clang, a stagecoach rumbles in to scare

A flock of pigeons up. Under the town clock,

In the tavern, a hand pauses in the stock

Gesture of arrest — meanwhile workers walk

Home from the textile mill, townsfolk talk

On the steps—and the hand moves now to evoke

The fire of justice, a world gone up in smoke,

The voice quavering with the revenge of ages.

So the world seems to drift from these pages

Like the mist clearing on a field at dawn.

Only when two times, two forms are drawn

Together and their legibility

Disturbed, do you see that immortality

Is not very different from the present

And is for its sake. You pick a fragment

Of grenade which pierced the body of a song

On Daphnis and Chloe. And you long,

Ruefully, to have a talk with her,

As if it were what life prepared you for.

—How is it, Chloe, that your pretty skirt

Is torn so badly by the winds that hurt

Real people, you who, in eternity, sing

The hours, sun in your hair appearing

And disappearing? How is it that your breasts

Are pierced by shrapnel, and the oak groves burn,

While you, charmed, not caring at all, turn

To run through forests of machinery and concrete

And haunt us with the echoes of your feet',

If there is such an eternity, lush

Though short-lived, that's enough. But how ... hush!

We were predestined to live when the scene

Grows dim and the outline of a Greek ruin

Blackens the sky. It is noon, and wandering

Through a dark building, you see workers sitting

Down to a fire a narrow ray of sunlight

Kindles on the floor. They have dragged out

Heavy books and made a table of them

And begun to cut their bread. In good time

A tank will clatter past, a streetcar chime.