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The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.

Czeslaw Milosz

All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Dress Existence Freedom Lost Prison White Wings Yourself
If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Kind Man Myself
Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Echo Mountain Poetry
I’ve always regretted that I’m made of contradictions. But, if contradiction is impossible to overcome, we have to accept both its ends.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Acceptance End Impossible Regret
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
I liked beaches, swimming pools, and clinics for there they were the bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. I pitied them and myself, but this will not protect me. The word and the thought are over.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Bone Flesh Myself Thinking
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
Love means to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Distant Love Way Yourself
The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

History Myself Stupidity Volume
The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Live Speak Story Talk Tribute
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
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
You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Failure Myself Reach Try
Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Finding Growth Reality Small Travel Tree Truth
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
It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Book. Philosophy Country Fate Influence Realization Time

The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.

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The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.

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