Poetic Sundays: Notes

Because sorting things for the movers tomorrow is driving me nuts. Because I need a moment outside my own brain. Because it's beautiful.

An excerpt from Czeslaw Milosz's "Notes":

ON THE NEED TO DRAW BOUNDARIES

Wretched and dishonest was the sea.

SUPPLICATION

From galactic silence protect us.

HYPOTHESIS

If, she said, you wrote in Polish to punish yourself for your sins, you will be saved.

PORTRAIT

He locked himself in a tower, read ancient authors, fed birds on the terrace.

For only in this way could he forget about having to know himself.

CONSOLATION

Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.

THE PERFECT REPUBLIC

Right from early morning--the sun has barely made it through the dense maples--they walk contemplating the holy word: Is.

HARMONY

Deprived. And why shouldn't you be deprived?

Those better than you were deprived.

STRONG OR WEAK POINT

You were always ready to fall to your knees!

Yes, I was always ready to fall to my knees.

A GOD-FEARING MAN

So God heard my request after all, and allowed me to sin in his praise.

AIM IN LIFE

Oh to cover my shame with regal attire!

MEDICINE

If not for the revulsion at the smell of his skin,

I could think I was a good man.

LONGING

Not that I want to be a god or a hero.

Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.

IN REVERSE

On the ruins of their homes grows a young forest. Wolves are returning and a bear sleeps secure in a raspberry thicket.

MORNING

We awoke from a sleep of I don't know how many thousand years. An eagle flew in the sun again but it didn't mean the same.