Czesław Miłosz Quotes

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.

You are a tongue of the debased, of the unreasonable, hating themselves even more than they hate other nations, a tongue of informers, a tongue of the confused, ill with their own innocence. But without you, who am I? Only a scholar in a distant country, a success, without fears and humiliations. Yes, who am I without you? Just a philosopher, like everyone else.

I am only a man: I need visible signs. I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction. Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church lift its hand, only once, just once, for me. But I understand that signs must be human, therefore call one man, anyone on earth, not me — after all I have some decency — and allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you.

And the city stood in its brightness when years later I returned, My face covered with a coat though now no one was left Of those who could have remembered my debts never paid, My shames not eternal, base deeds to be forgiven. And the city stood in its brightness when years later I returned.

I liked beaches, swimming pools, and clinics for there they were the bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. I pitied them and myself, but this will not protect me. The word and the thought are over.

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?

And here I am walking the eternal earth. Tiny, leaning on a stick. I pass a volcanic park, lie down at a spring, Not knowing how to express what is always and everywhere: The earth I cling to is so solid Under my breast and belly that I feel grateful For every pebble, and I don't know whether It is my pulse or the earth's that I hear, When the hems of invisible silk vestments pass over me, Hands, wherever they have been, touch my arm, Or small laughter, once, long ago over wine, With lanterns in the magnolias, for my house is huge.

We are a poor people, much afflicted. We camped under various stars, Where you dip water with a cup from a muddy river And slice your bread with a pocketknife. This is a place accepted, not chosen.

Long into the night we were walking on the Piazza del Duomo. He: That I was too politicized. And I answered him more or less as follows: If you have a nail in your shoe, what then? Do you love that nail? Same with me. I am for the moon amid the vineyards When you see high up the snow on the Alps.

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.

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.

Wherever he steps, there always Endures traced in sand A large-toed footprint Which clamors to be tried out By his childish foot arriving From the virgin forests.

He doesn't know birds live In another time than man. He doesn't know a tree lives In another time than birds And will grow slowly Upward in a gray column Thinking with its roots Of the silver of underworld kingdoms.

He who invokes history is always secure. The dead will not rise to witness against him. You can accuse them of any deeds you like. Their reply will always be silence. Their empty faces swim out of the deep dark. You can fill them with any features desired. Proud of dominion over people long vanished, Change the past into your own, better likeness.

</p> Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality.</p>Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, So the weary travelers may find repose in the lie.