Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to. - Czesław Miłosz

Tomber amoureux. To fall in love. Does it occur suddenly or gradually? If gradually, when is the moment “already”? I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With a marten in a picture. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With a poem by a little-known poet. With human beings whose names still move me. And always the object of love was enveloped in erotic fantasy or was submitted, as in Stendhal, to a “cristallisation,” so it is frightful to think of that object as it was, naked among the naked things, and of the fairy tales about it one invents. Yes, I was often in love with something or someone. Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love. That is something different.

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.

TAKO MALO

Tako malo sam rekao,
Kratki dani.

Kratki dani,
Kratke noći,
Kratke godine.

Tako malo sam rekao,
Ne stigoh.

Moje srce se umorilo
Od ushićenja,
Očajanja,
Gorljivosti,
Nade.

Čeljust levijatana
Zatvarala se u meni.

Nag ležah na obalama
Bezljudnih ostrva.

Povuče me u ponor sa sobom
Beli kit sveta.

I sad ne znam
Šta je bilo istinsko.

(U Berkliju, 1969.)