The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
CZESLAW MILOSZThe living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
CZESLAW MILOSZIt’s true that what is morbid is highly valued today, and so you may think that I am only joking or that I’ve devised just one more means of praising Art with the help of irony.
CZESLAW MILOSZOn the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
CZESLAW MILOSZYou who think of us: they lived only in delusion, Know that we the People of the Book, will never die!
CZESLAW MILOSZOur memory is childish and it saves only what we need.
CZESLAW MILOSZI 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.
CZESLAW MILOSZBe young forever, seasons of the earth.
CZESLAW MILOSZI knew that I would speak in the language of the vanquished No more durable than old customs, family rituals, Christmas tinsel, and once a year the hilarity of carols.
CZESLAW MILOSZThe history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
CZESLAW MILOSZEven 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.
CZESLAW MILOSZLanguage is the only homeland.
CZESLAW MILOSZWhen a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.
CZESLAW MILOSZWhat is this enigmatic impulse that does not allow one to settle down in the achieved, the finished? I think it is a quest for reality.
CZESLAW MILOSZAnd 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?
CZESLAW MILOSZI’ve always regretted that I’m made of contradictions. But, if contradiction is impossible to overcome, we have to accept both its ends.
CZESLAW MILOSZIf I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
CZESLAW MILOSZ