Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a door opening in me and I entered the clarity of early morning. One after another my… - Czesław Miłosz

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a door opening in me and I entered the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing, like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas assigned to my brush came closer, ready now to be described better than they were before.

Only if we assume that a poet constantly strives to liberate himself from borrowed styles in search for reality, is he dangerous. In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot. And, alas, a temptation to pronounce it, similar to an acute itching, becomes an obsession which doesn't allow one to think of anything else. That is why a poet chooses internal or external exile. It is not certain, however, that he is motivated exclusively by his concern with actuality. He may also desire to free himself from it and elsewhere, in other countries, on other shores, to recover, at least for short moments, his true vocation — which is to contemplate Being.

What is this enigmatic impulse that does not allow one to settle down in the achieved, the finished? I think it is a quest for reality.

Przysięgam, nie ma we mnie czarodziejstwa słów. Mówię do ciebie milcząc, jak obłok czy drzewo.