The Sun by Czeslaw Milosz All colors come from the sun. And it does not have Any particular color, for it contains them all. And the whole Earth is … - Czesław Miłosz

Reality calls for a name, for words, but it is unbearable, and if it is touched, if it draws very close, the poet’s mouth cannot even utter a complaint of Job: all art proves to be nothing compared with action. Yet to embrace reality in such a manner that it is preserved in all its old tangle of good and evil, of despair and hope, is possible only thanks to distance, only by soaring above it — but this in turn seems then a moral treason.

When it hurts we return to the banks of certain rivers. — Czeslaw Milosz, from “I Sleep A Lot,” The Collected Poems 1931 — 1987. (The Ecco Press; First Edition edition 1988)

He sang the brightness of mornings and green rivers,
He sang of smoking water in the rose-colored daybreaks,
Of colors: cinnabar, carmine, burnt sienna, blue,
Of the delight of swimming in the sea under marble cliffs,
Of feasting on a terrace above the tumult of a fishing port,
Of tastes of wine, olive oil, almonds, mustard, salt.
Of the flight of the swallow, the falcon,
Of a dignified flock of pelicans above the bay,
Of the scent of an armful of lilacs in summer rain,
Of his having composed his words always against death
And of having made no rhyme in praise of nothingness.