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Kätzchen · 06-04-2010, 08:35 PM

Esse

I looked at that face, dumbfounded.

The lights of métro stations flew by; I didn't notice them.

What can be done, if our sight lacks absolute power to devour objects ecstatically, in an instant, leaving nothing more than the void of an ideal form, a sign like a hieroglyph simplified from the drawing of an animal or bird?

A slightly snub nose, a high brow with sleekly brushed-back hair, the line of the chin - but why isn't the power of sight absolute? - and in a whiteness tinged with pink two sculpted holes, containing a dark, lustrous lava.

To absorb that face but to have it simultaneously against the background of all spring boughs, walls, waves, in its weeping, its laughter, moving it back fifteen years, or ahead thirty.

To have. It is not even a desire. Like a butterfly, a fish, the stem of a plant, only more mysterious.

And so it befell me that after so many attempts at naming the world, I am able only to repeat, harping on one string, the highest, the unique avowal beyond which no power can attain: I am, she is. Shout, blow the trumpets, make thousands-strong marches, leap, rend your clothing, repeating only: is!

She got out at Raspail. 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.

(1954)

~ Czeslaw Milosz: The Collected Poems 1931-1987

Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Pinsky
Copyright © Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Pinsky (1988)

06-04-2010, 08:35 PM	#2495
Kätzchen Member How Do You Identify?: Femme Preferred Pronoun?: She, please. Join Date: May 2010 Location: Somewhere over the rainbow ツ Posts: 16,060 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 30,111 Thanked 33,517 Times in 10,643 Posts Rep Power: 21474868	Esse I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of métro stations flew by; I didn't notice them. What can be done, if our sight lacks absolute power to devour objects ecstatically, in an instant, leaving nothing more than the void of an ideal form, a sign like a hieroglyph simplified from the drawing of an animal or bird? A slightly snub nose, a high brow with sleekly brushed-back hair, the line of the chin - but why isn't the power of sight absolute? - and in a whiteness tinged with pink two sculpted holes, containing a dark, lustrous lava. To absorb that face but to have it simultaneously against the background of all spring boughs, walls, waves, in its weeping, its laughter, moving it back fifteen years, or ahead thirty. To have. It is not even a desire. Like a butterfly, a fish, the stem of a plant, only more mysterious. And so it befell me that after so many attempts at naming the world, I am able only to repeat, harping on one string, the highest, the unique avowal beyond which no power can attain: I am, she is. Shout, blow the trumpets, make thousands-strong marches, leap, rend your clothing, repeating only: is! She got out at Raspail. 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. (1954) ~ Czeslaw Milosz: The Collected Poems 1931-1987 Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Pinsky Copyright © Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Pinsky (1988)