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

Czeslaw Milosz

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
Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Catch Hold Illusion Man
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
In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Anonymous Gun People Room Sound Truth Word
Learning To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Believe Discover Human Learning Life Work
At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Doubt Myself Night Precious Sunrise
He returns years later, has no demands. He wants only one, most precious thing: To see, purely and simply, without name, Without expectations, fears, or hopes, At the edge where there is no I or not-I.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Demand Fear Himself Hope Precious Return See
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
A man should not love the moon. An ax should not lose weight in his hand. His garden should smell of rotting apples, And grow a fair amount of nettles.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Growth Hands Love Man Moon Weight
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
From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife, what grain will be saved? My son, believe me, nothing remains, Only adult toil, the furrow of fate in the palm. Only toil, Nothing more.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Believe Flame Knife Life Myself
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
Consciousness even in my sleep changes primary colors. The features of my face melt like a wax doll in the fire. And who can consent to see in the mirror the mere face of man?
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Change Color Conscious Consent Man Primary Sleep
Language is the only homeland.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Home Land Language
What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Nation People Poetry Save

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

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

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