Poetry is an attempt to penetrate the dense reality to find a place where the simplest things look as new as through the eyes of a child. - Czesław Miłosz

We are an echo that runs, skittering, through a train of rooms. – Czeslaw Milosz, from “The Wormwood Star.” The Separate Notebooks. (Ecco September 21, 1986) Originally published 1984.

There was a time when only wise books were read helping us to bear our pain and misery. This, after all, is not quite the same as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics. And yet the world is different from what it seems to be and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.

"The World"

It appears that it was all a misunderstanding.
What was only a trial run was taken seriously.
The rivers will return to their beginnings.
The wind will cease in its turning about.
Trees instead of budding will tend to their roots.
Old men will chase a ball, a glance in the mirror–
They are children again.
The dead will wake up, not comprehending.
Till everything that happened has unhappened.
What a relief! Breathe freely, you who have suffered much.