Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.
CZESLAW MILOSZNot that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.
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 MILOSZThe voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
CZESLAW MILOSZWe have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
CZESLAW MILOSZLearning To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.
CZESLAW MILOSZAnd now I am ready to keep running When the sun rises beyond the borderlands of death. I already see mountain ridges in the heavenly forest Where, beyond every essence, a new essence awaits.
CZESLAW MILOSZThe 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 MILOSZYet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.
CZESLAW MILOSZEvery 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 MILOSZI have no wisdom, no skills, and no faith but I received strength, it tears the world apart. I shall break, a heavy wave, against its shores and a young wave will cover my trace.
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 MILOSZLanguage is the only homeland.
CZESLAW MILOSZOn the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
CZESLAW MILOSZAll of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
CZESLAW MILOSZTwo attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.
CZESLAW MILOSZWhen I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.
CZESLAW MILOSZ