Czeslaw Milosz

I looked out the window at dawn and saw a young apple treetranslucent in brightness
And when I looked out at dawn once again, an apple tree laden withfruit stood there
Many years had probably gone by but I remember nothing of whathappene...

A guardian of long-distance conduits in the desert
A one-man crew of a fortress in the sand
Whoever he was
At dawn he saw furrowed mountains The color of ashes, above the melting darkness,

You who wronged a simple man Bursting into laughter at the crime,
And kept a pack of fools around you To mix good and evil, to blur the line,
Though everyone bowed down before you,
Saying virtue and wisdom lit your way,

It does not know it
It does not know it
It does not know it is this not that
And, more and more often, agape,

No, it won’t do, my sweet theologians
Desire will not save the morality of God
If he created beings able to choose between good and evil,
And they chose, and the world lies in iniquity,

Winter came as it does in this valley
After eight dry months rain fell And the mountains, straw-colored, turned green for a while
In the canyons where gray laurels Graft their stony roots to granite,
Streams must have filled the dri...

Maidenly lake, fathomless lake,
Stay as you were once, overgrown with rushes,
Idling with a reflected cloud, for my
Whom your shore no longer touches

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I enteredthe clarity of early morning
One after another my former lives were departing,like ships, together with their sorrow
And the countries,...

Love means to learn to look at
The way one looks at distant
For you are only one thing among many
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,

You whom I could not
Listen to me
Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words

All was taken away from you: white dresses,wings, even existence
Yet I believe you,messengers
There, where the world is turned inside out,a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seems
...

This happened long ago, before the onset of universal genetic correctness
Boys and girls would stand naked before mirrors studying the defects of their structure
Nose too long, ears like burdocks, sunken chin just like a mongoloid
B...

The pungent smells of a California winter,
Grayness and rosiness, an almost transparent full moon
I add logs to the fire,
I drink and I ponder

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn
A red wing rose in the darkness
And suddenly a hare ran across the road
One of us pointed to it with his hand

Stalking a deer I wandered deep into the mountains and from there I saw
Or perhaps it was for some other reason that I rose above the setting sun
Above the hills of blackwood and a slab of ocean and the steps of a glacier, carmine-colore...

On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover,
A Fisherman mends a glimmering net
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing And the snake is gold-skinned as it it should always be