To Raja Rao -- Czeslaw Milosz

Guest poem submitted by Prashant Paul:

(Poem #1883) To Raja Rao Raja, I wish I knew the cause of that malady. For years I could not accept the place I was in. I felt I should be somewhere else. A city, trees, human voices lacked the quality of presence. I would live by the hope of moving on. Somewhere else there was a city of real presence, of real trees and voices and friendship and love. Link, if you wish, my peculiar case (on the border of schizophrenia) to the messianic hope of my civilization. Ill at ease in the tyranny, ill at ease in the republic, in the one I longed for freedom, in the other for the end of corruption. Building in my mind a permanent polis forever deprived of aimless bustle. I learned at last to say: this is my home, here, before the glowing coal of ocean sunsets, on the shore which faces the shores of your Asia, in a great republic, moderately corrupt. Raja, this did not cure me of my guilt and shame. A shame of failing to be what I should have been. The image of myself grows gigantic on the wall and against it my miserable shadow. That's how I came to believe in Original Sin which is nothing but the first victory of the ego. Tormented by my ego, deluded by it I give you, as you see, a ready argument. I hear you saying that liberation is possible and that Socratic wisdom is identical with your guru's. No, Raja, I must start from what I am. I am those monsters which visit my dreams and reveal to me my hidden essence. If I am sick, there is no proof whatsoever that man is a healthy creature. Greece had to lose, her pure consciousness had to make our agony only more acute. We needed God loving us in our weakness and not in the glory of beatitude. No help, Raja, my part is agony, struggle, abjection, self-love, and self-hate, prayer for the Kingdom and reading Pascal. -- Czeslaw Milosz

        (Berkeley, 1969 )

I stumbled upon this poem(and Milosz) when searching for the writer Raja
Rao. By far one of the most brilliant that I have read, and it brings
forth the best of Milosz. (Raja Rao was a great Indian writer, and with
R. K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand considered one of the trinity of Indian
writers in english.)

To me some of the elements of the poem come from the time Milosz spent
his time at Berkeley away from his native place Poland, like the first
part. But the poem is also an accurate description of the struggle with
the present, and the hope for a change that changes everything. Two
striking ideas -- original sin and "...I must start from where I am...",
I really love the way they are written here.

An absolutely amazing poem in my book.

Prashant.

Eyes -- Czeslaw Milosz

Guest poem submitted by Sarah Korah :

(Poem #1758) Eyes My most honorable eyes, you are not in the best of shape. I receive from you an image less than sharp, And if a color, then it's dimmed. And you were a pack of royal greyhounds once, With whom I would set out in the early mornings. My wondrously quick eyes, you saw many things, Lands and cities, islands and oceans. Together we greeted immense sunrises When the fresh air set us running on the trails Where the dew had just begun to dry. Now what you have seen is hidden inside me And changed into memories or dreams. I am slowly moving away from the fairgrounds of the world And I notice in myself a distaste For the monkeyish dress, the screams and drumbeats. What a relief. To be alone with my meditation On the basic similarity in humans And their tiny grain of dissimilarity. Without eyes, my gaze is fixed on one bright point, That grows large and takes me in. -- Czeslaw Milosz

I was reminded of this poem when my hardy 93 year old grandfather complained
of a slight loss of hearing. He was also rather upset about the fact that he
can *only* walk a couple of kilometers these days.

I confess we grandchildren shared smiles while thinking 'Hey, we'd be lucky
to be half as fit as you when we're in our 70's.'... But then it occurred to
me that sights, sounds and memories, mobility and independence - these are
important at any age.

Few poets have inhabited the land of old age as long or as energetically as
Milosz [1911-2003]. A self proclaimed "one day's master", Milosz had a great
capacity to both confront the world's suffering and embrace its joys.

Wistfulness, acceptance, even a little humour - this short poem has it all.

Sarah Korah.

Minstrels has write-ups on Milosz, so I'm spared the trouble. And yes, my
grandfather seems quite happy with his new hearing aid :-)

Nonadaptation -- Czeslaw Milosz

Guest poem submitted by Sarah Korah :

(Poem #1731) Nonadaptation I was not made to live anywhere except in Paradise. Such, simply, was my genetic inadaptation. Here on earth every prick of a rose-thorn changed into a wound. whenever the sun hid behind a cloud, I grieved. I pretended to work like others from morning to evening, but I was absent, dedicated to invisible countries. For solace I escaped to city parks, there to observe and faithfully describe flowers and trees, but they changed, under my hand, into the gardens of Paradise. I have not loved a woman with my five senses. I only wanted from her my sister, from before the banishment. And I respected religion, for on this earth of pain it was a funereal and a propitiatory song. -- Czeslaw Milosz

As a statement of intent, and as a memorable first line, Milosz makes things
very clear by saying "I was not made to live anywhere except in Paradise".
Yet in typical Milosz style, what follows is NOT a funny, escapist take on
life. Instead we're treated to 13 lines of intelligent, memorable poetry.

It amuses me that whenever I quote from this poem, I tend to choose the
light hearted lines ("I pretended to work like others from morning to
evening, but I was absent, dedicated to invisible countries.").. and people
naturally assume that it's from a funny poem. Talk of taking a quote out of
context !

Czeslaw Milosz's bio, and more of his poems, can be found on minstrels at
  http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1599.html

Sarah Korah.

To Mrs. Professor in Defense of My Cat's Honor and Not Only -- Czeslaw Milosz

Guest poem submitted by Nisha Susan:

(Poem #1598) To Mrs. Professor in Defense of My Cat's Honor and Not Only My valiant helper, a small-sized tiger Sleeps sweetly on my desk, by the computer, Unaware that you insult his tribe. Cats play with a mouse or a half-dead mole. You are wrong, though: it's not out of cruelty. They simply like a thing that moves. For, after all, we know that only consciousness Can for a moment move into the Other, Empathize with the pain and panic of a mouse. And such as cats are, all of Nature is. Indifferent, alas, to the good and the evil. Quite a problem for us, I am afraid. Natural history has its museums, But why should our children learn about monsters, An earth of snakes and reptiles for millions of years? Nature devouring, nature devoured, Butchery day and night smoking with blood. And who created it? Was it the good Lord? Yes, undoubtedly, they are innocent, Spiders, mantises, sharks, pythons. We are the only ones who say: cruelty. Our consciousness and our conscience Alone in the pale anthill of galaxies Put their hope in a humane God. Who cannot but feel and think, Who is kindred to us by warmth and movement, For we are, as he told us, similar to Him. Yet if it is so, then He takes pity On every mouse, on every wounded bird, Then the universe for him is like a Crucifixion. Such is the outcome of your attack on the cat: A theological, Augustinian grimace, Which makes difficult our walking on this earth. -- Czeslaw Milosz

I found an anthology called "The Poetical Cat" recently and peeped in with
quite a bit of suspicion. It might have turned out to be one of those mulchy
last-minute-gift collections. But happily, it was a set of witty and
unfamiliar cat poems from across the world. And it had this lovely Milosz.

It is easy to be a Milosz fan. You can approach any one of his poems weighed
down by angsty questions of "What goes by the name of poetry in this
millenium? What is the role of poetry? Have the criteria for great poetry
changed? Is greatness itself unfashionable?". Then the intelligence, heart
and elegance of Milosz's poems make great writing tangible again. And this
is despite my gratitude for being born in an age when there is the
cleverness of Wendy Cope or the madness of  Ondaatje's Elimination Dance.

In this poem Milosz takes the tiresome squabble between cat people and
non-cat people and actually uses it to critique Christian morality. And this
elevated argument is woven with such grace that it is embarrassing to think
of the mechanics of writing. You are forced to think that this poem was
born, like mangoes were born.

My favourite thing about Milosz is that every poem has a big, robust, fully
flowered idea holding it together. This is of course obvious in classics
like "Ars Poetica" [1]. He is unafraid of taking a stand and equally
unafraid of being in two minds about the Big Questions. In "A Poem For the
End of the Century" [2] he angrily condemns our ability to forget suffering
in pursuit of the feel good factor. In "Conversation with Jeanne" [3] he
does a neat volte face and argues in favour of the beauty of the moment. His
craft is so extraordinary that the poems in conjunction only comfort all of
us who swing from righteous indignation to happy amnesia.

Here is a nice bio of the Nobel Prize winner:
 [broken link] http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/milosz/bio.html

And lots of poems:
http://wings.buffalo.edu/info-poland/web/arts_culture/literature/poetry/milo
sz/poems/link.shtml

Nisha Susan.

[1] http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1545.html
[2] [broken link] http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/milosz/mil2.html
[3] [broken link] http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/milosz/mil1.html

Ars Poetica -- Czeslaw Milosz

Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul:

(Poem #1545) Ars Poetica I have always aspired to a more spacious form that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose and would let us understand each other without exposing the author or reader to sublime agonies. In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent: a thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us, so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out and stood in the light, lashing his tail. That's why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion, though its an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel. It's hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from, when so often they're put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty. What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons, who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues, and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand, work at changing his destiny for their convenience? It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today, and so you may think that I am only joking or that I've devised just one more means of praising Art with the help of irony. 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. People therefore preserve silent integrity thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors. The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will. What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry, as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly, under unbearable duress and only with the hope that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument. -- Czeslaw Milosz

It's been little over a month now since Milosz died and I've finally managed
to find the courage to send in a poem to mark his passing. I do this not
because I feel I have something special to say about Milosz (I admit to
having discovered him only about a year ago) but because as a long-time
devotee of Minstrels I feel it would be a shame if so great a poetic voice
passed away from among us and we said nothing. All his life Milosz found the
words to make loss quiet and exact - exiled by silence, he found a way to
fight it without screaming back. Now that he's dead, we owe it to him not to
let the silence win.

This poem is a good demonstration of just why Milosz, was, IMHO, so
important to the poetry of his century. It was a century that Milosz himself
described as a time when "We were permitted to shriek in the tongues of
dwarfs and demons / But pure and generous words were forbidden / Under so
stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one / Considered himself a
lost man" (Milosz - A Task) - too much of the literary legacy of the century
lies with Plath and Ginsberg, with Auden and Eliot, with Langston Hughes and
Bishop and Berryman, with Neruda and Paz. This is not to say, of course,
that these poets do not deserve their stature (far from it - their influence
is clearly well deserved) or that they are the only ones from the last
hundred years who "matter" - only that Milosz represents another and no less
authentic strain of the poetic measure. As he put it himself: "in me there
is no wizardry of words. I speak to you with silence, like a cloud or a
tree."

Milosz's voice is the voice of a twilight between the silence and the cry,
at once gentle and threatened and uncertain. Milosz speaks from the heart,
but his poems are not to be shouted or declaimed, they are to be read
softly, as among a circle of intimates. He is not a flame - he is a lamp,
his light low yet illuminating.

Of course, Milosz is not alone here - much of Brodsky resonates with the
same voice and at least some of Walcott. What makes Milosz special, I think
(and I can't explain this) is that his voice is more humble because wiser,
less bitter because more forgiving, more apt to find, if not joy, than at
least peace. Irony is not a major theme for Milosz - on the contrary he
specialises in making moral judgements straight to his reader's face (what
other poet in the last fifty years would say "There was a time when only
wise books were read"). Many people would argue that Milosz is less
important than I make him out to be here (though fifty years of incredible
poetry and a Nobel prize are pretty hard to argue with) and Milosz would be
the first to agree with them.

As I said earlier, this poem is a stunning summary of what Milosz's poems
are about. As we think about his work, I think there are few better ways to
remember him than as the poet who wrote "reluctantly / under unbearable
duress and only with the hope / that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us
for their instrument". It's a test that few poets today could pass.

Aseem.

[Minstrels Links]

Poems about poetry:
  Poem #187, Poetry for Supper  -- R. S. Thomas
  Poem #188, Ars Poetica  -- Archibald MacLeish
  Poem #189, dear Captain Poetry  -- bpNichol
  Poem #190, Young Poets  -- Nicanor Parra

Czeslaw Milosz:
  Poem #837, Child of Europe
  Poem #1229, You Whose Name

You Whose Name -- Czeslaw Milosz

Guest poem sent in by Dominik Rabiej

(Poem #1229) You Whose Name You whose name is aggressor and devourer. Putrid and sultry, in fermentation. You mash into pulp sages and prophets, Criminals and heroes, indifferently. My vocativus is useless. You do not hear me, though I address you, Yet I want to speak, for I am against you. So what if you gulp me, I am not yours. You overcome me with exhaustion and fever. You blur my thought, which protests, You roll over me, dull unconscious power. The one who will overcome you is swift, armed: Mind, spirit, maker, renewer. He jousts with you in depths and on high, Equestrian, winged, lofty, silver-scaled. I have served him in the investiture of forms. It's not my concern what he will do with me. A retinue advances in the sunlight by the lakes. From white villages Easter bells resound. -- Czeslaw Milosz

Note: Milosz won the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature

As the Easter season approaches and Lent draws to a close, I find this poem
particularly moving, especially in the light of recent world events
regarding tyranny and its fall.  No matter how oppressed a people are, the
"dull unconscious power" of hatred can never crush the mind and spirit of
human.  C. Milosz knows this first-hand.  He worked with the Polish
Resistance movement in Warsaw during World War II before defecting to France
in 1951 and finally the United States in 1960.

Dominik R. Rabiej
http://www.dominik.net/
MIT 2005 VI-3 & XV-OR

Links:
  Biography from the Nobel Foundation site:
    http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1980/milosz-bio.html

  The Academy of American Poets Milosz page:
    [broken link] http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C040409

Child of Europe -- Czeslaw Milosz

Guest poem sent in by Jenny Lobasz

(Poem #837) Child of Europe 1 We, whose lungs fill with the sweetness of day, Who in May admire trees flowering, Are better than those who perished. We, who taste of exotic dishes, And enjoy fully the delights of love, Are better than those who were buried. We, from the fiery furnaces, from behind barbed wires On which the winds of endless Autumns howled, We, who remember battles where the wounded air roared in paroxysms of pain, We, saved by our own cunning and knowledge. By sending others to the more exposed positions, Urging them loudly to fight on, Ourselves withdrawing in certainty of the cause lost. Having the choice of our own death and that of a friend, We chose his, coldly thinking: let it be done quickly. We sealed gas chamber doors, stole bread, Knowing the next day would be harder to bear than the day before. As befits human beings, we explored good and evil. Our malignant wisdom has no like on this planet. Accept it as proven that we are better than they, The gullible, hot-blooded weaklings, careless with their lives. 2 Treasure your legacy of skills, child of Europe, Inheritor of gothic cathedrals, of baroque churches, Of synagogues filled with the wailing of a wronged people. Successor of Descartes, Spinoza, inheritor of the word "honor," posthumous child of Leonidas, Treasure the skills acquired in the hour of terror. You have a clever mind which sees instantly The good and bad of any situation. You have an elegant, skeptical mind which enjoys pleasures Quite unknown to primitive races. Guided by this mind you cannot fail to see The soundness of the advice we give you: Let the sweetness of day fill your lungs. For this we have strict but wise rules. 3 There can be no question of force triumphant. We live in the age of victorious justice. Do not mention force, or you will be accused Of upholding fallen doctrines in secret. He who has power, has it by historical logic. Respectfully bow to that logic. Let your lips, proposing a hypothesis, Not know about the hand faking the experiment. Let your hand, faking the experiment, Not know about the lips proposing a hypothesis. Learn to predict a fire with unerring precision. Then burn the house down to fulfill the prediction. 4 Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, So the weary travelers may find repose in the lie. After the Day of the Lie gather in select circles, Shaking with laughter when our real deeds are mentioned. Dispensing flattery called: perspicacious thinking. Dispensing flattery called: a great talent. We, the last who can still draw joy from cynicism. We, whose cunning is not unlike despair. A new, humorless generation is now arising, It takes in deadly earnest all we received with laughter. 5 Let your words speak not through their meanings, But through them against whom they are used. Fashion your weapon from ambiguous words. Consign clear words to lexical limbo. Judge no words before the clerks have checked In their card index by whom they were spoken. The voice of passion is better that the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history. 6 Love no country: countries soon disappear. Love no city: cities are soon rubble. Throw away keepsakes, or from your desk A choking, poisonous fume will exude. Do not love people: people soon perish. Or they are wronged and call for your help. Do not gaze into the pools of the past. Their corroded surface will mirror A face different from the one you expected. 7 He who invokes history is always secure. The dead will not rise to witness against him. You can accuse them of any deed 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. 8 The laughter born of the love of truth Is now the laughter of the enemies of the people. Gone is the age of satire. We no longer need mock The senile tyrant with false courtly phrases. Stern as befits the servants of a cause, We will permit ourselves only sycophantic humor. Tight-lipped, guided by reasons only, Cautiously let us step into the era of the unchained fire. -- Czeslaw Milosz

My father sent me this poem, writing, "I believe this is one of the most
profound descriptions of the twentieth century that I have read. I think
that it was written in Poland in 1945."  I completely agree.  Milosz has
a gift for infusing his poetry with history and our obligations, as he
says in another poem, "Dedication," "What is a poetry which does not
save/Nations or people?"  His command of imagery is amazing, and I've
found it impossible to read this and not be overwhelmed with the guilt
and cynicism he describes.

For some quick biographical information:

 Czeslaw Milosz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980;
 indeed, he is one of the greatest writers living today. Born in
 Lithuania in 1911, Czeslaw Milosz witnessed the turmoil of early
 twentieth-century Europe. In the thirties, he became a leader of the
 Polish avant-garde poetry movement and during World War II, a member of
 the resistance. The weight of Milosz's poetry arises from his
 remembering that man is inextricably linked to his history. Milosz
 deftly fuses historical and individual elements, making his poetry "a
 kind of higher politics, an unpolitical politics." In the forties,
 Czeslaw Milosz served as diplomat for Poland's communist regime in
 Washington, D.C.; however, in 1951, he defected to Paris where he spent
 the next decade as a freelance writer. He continued to write in Polish
 for the people he could no longer be with -- about lost homelands, the
 search for identity, and political repression. Through his poetry,
 Milosz struggles to understand human nature in its entirety, and he
 teaches that "we must lift ourselves over new thresholds of
 consciousness; that to aim at higher and higher thresholds is our only
 happiness."

 In 1961, Czeslaw Milosz was offered a lectureship in Polish Literature
 at the University of California; soon he became professor of Slavic
 languages and literatures. His published works include: Native Realm,
 The Issa Valley, Czeslaw Milosz: The Collected Poems 1931-1987, The
 Separate Notebooks, Bells in Winter, and A Year of the Hunter, and
 Roadside Dog among others. In January 2001 his book of "memories, dreams
 & reflections," Milosz's ABC'S (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) was published.
 In April of 2001, Czeslaw Milosz will publish his book length poem,
 Treatise on Poetry (Ecco Press, HarperCollins - translated by Robert
 Hass). His other forthcoming (2001-2002) works include New & Collected
 Poems, Selected Prose, as well as Legends of Modernity.

        -- [broken link] http://www.barclayagency.com/milosz.html