Quote

From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife, what grain will be saved? My son, believe me, nothing remains, Only adult toil, the furrow of fate in the palm. Only toil, Nothing more.

Czeslaw Milosz

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Czeslaw Milosz
Age: 93 †
Born: 1911
Born: June 30
Died: 2004
Died: August 14
Diplomat
Essayist
Pedagogue
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Clarksburg
West Virginia
Miłosz
Czelaw Milosz
Adults
Knives
Fate
Toil
Remains
Apple
Cutting
Grain
Furrow
Nothing
Apples
Flaming
Believe
Adult
Palm
Life
Saved
Palms
Son
Knife

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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
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Human reason is beautiful and invincible. No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. It puts what should be above things as they are. It does not know Jew from Greek nor slave from master.
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They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds. I put this book here for you, who once lived So that you should visit us no more.
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Even if that is so, there will remain A word wakened by lips that perish, A tireless messenger who runs and runs Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, And calls out, protests, screams.
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It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends
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At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
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Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting.
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The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
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Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date.
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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
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I imagine the earth when I am no more: Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.
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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.
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I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.
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Language is the only homeland.
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I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
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It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy.
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I liked beaches, swimming pools, and clinics for there they were the bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. I pitied them and myself, but this will not protect me. The word and the thought are over.
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You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
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The revolt against one's environment is usually 'shame' of one's environment.
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