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At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.

Czeslaw Milosz

For a country without a past is nothing, a word That, hardly spoken, loses its meaning, A perishable wall destroyed by flame, An echo of animal emotions.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Animal Country Destroy Flame Hard Past Speak Word
The partition separating life from death is so tenuous. The unbelievable fragility of our organism suggests a vision on a screen: a kind of mist condenses itself into a human shape, lasts a moment and scatters.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Break Death Kind Life Moments Partition Separate Vision
The true enemy of man is generalization.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Enemy Generalization Man True
What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Nation People Poetry Save
All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

End High Independent Ourselves Wisdom
All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Dress Existence Freedom Lost Prison White Wings Yourself
Consolation Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Calm Goodness Lost Oblivion Sin Yourself
The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Better History Inspirational Passion Reason Voice
Every poet depends upon generations who wrote in his native tongue; he inherits styles and forms elaborated by those who lived before him. At the same time, though, he feels that those old means of expression are not adequate to his own experience.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Expression Form Generation Himself Inheritance Poet
I imagine the earth when I am no more: Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Book Born Imagination Myself People Radiant Woman
What 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 MILOSZ

Achievement Allow Finish Oneself Reality Settle Thinking
Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material. It finds it hard to endure the feeling that it must resign itself to passive acceptance of changes introduced from above.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Acceptance Defect Endurance Human Introduction Material Oneself Passive
I am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Friendship Myself Time
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Existence Myself River Suffering
Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

God Growth Hero Hurt Transformation
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Awakening Call Lips Protest Run Scream Word

At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.

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At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.

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