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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

It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

End Expedition Myself Sweet Thinking
When I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Curse Earth Fate Myself
On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Circle Day End Repair World
I am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Friendship Myself Time
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
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
I 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 MILOSZ

Myself Skills Strength Trace Wisdom Young
The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Difficult Oneself Person Poetry Purpose Reminder
Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material. It finds it hard to endure the feeling that it must resign itself to passive acceptance of changes introduced from above.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Acceptance Defect Endurance Human Introduction Material Oneself Passive
A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Belief Betrayal Death Judgement People Theory Thinking True
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
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 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
The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Children Trust Truth Wisdom
When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.
CZESLAW MILOSZ

Born Family Poet Writing

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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