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Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting.

Czeslaw Milosz

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
Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Attribute Description Desire Eyes Himself See
It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

End Expedition Myself Sweet Thinking
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
Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Earth Forget Reason Sparkle Suffering Yourself
Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Growth Small Truth Yourself
Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Children Memories Need Ourselves Save
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
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
On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Circle Day End Repair World
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 knew that I would speak in the language of the vanquished No more durable than old customs, family rituals, Christmas tinsel, and once a year the hilarity of carols.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Custom Durable Language Myself
What has no shadow has no strength to live.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Live Shadow Strength
Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Divide Poetry Yourself
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
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

Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting.

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Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting.

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Popular Authors

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