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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

It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Communication Experience Impossible Knowledge People
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
Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

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

Dress Existence Freedom Lost Prison White Wings Yourself
Do you know how it is when one wakes at night suddenly and asks, listening to the pounding heart: what more do you want, insatiable?
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Fear Listening Night Wake Up Yourself
Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Date Death Feeling Poet Remember Safety Writing Yourself
The soul exceeds its circumstances.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Circumstance Exceed Soul
When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Beyond Line Side Sunset World
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy, Repeats while he binds his tomatoes: No other end of the world will there be, No other end of the world will there be.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Appearance End Man Old Repeat White Willing World
If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Kind Man Myself
Language is the only homeland.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Home Land Language
We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Different Efficient Form Reaction Technique
The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

General Oneself Poetry Purpose Reminder
A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Belief Death People True
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
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

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.

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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.

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