What kind of man I was to be you’ve known since the beginning,
since the beginning of every creature.
It must be horrible to be aware, simultaneously,
of what is, what was,
and what will be.
I began my life confident and happy,
certain that the Sun rose every day for me
and that flowers opened for me every morning.
I ran all day in an enchanted garden.
Not suspecting that you had picked me from the Book of Genes
for another experiment altogether.
As if there were not proof enough
that free will is useless against destiny.
Under your amused glance I suffered
like a caterpillar impaled on the spike of a blackthorn.
The terror of the world opened itself to me.
Could I have avoided escape into illusion?
Into a liquor which stopped the chattering of teeth
and melted the burning ball in my breast
and made me think I could live like others?
I realized I was wandering from hope to hope
and I asked you, All Knowing, why you torture me.
Is it a trial like Job’s, so that I call faith a phantom
and say: You are not, nor do your verdicts exist,
and the earth is ruled by accident?
Who can contemplate
simultaneous, a-billion-times-multiplied pain?
It seems to me that people who cannot believe in you
deserve your praise.
But perhaps because you were overwhelmed by pity,
you descended to the earth
to experience the condition of mortal creatures.
Bore the pain of crucifixion for a sin, but committed by whom?
I pray to you, for I do not know how not to pray.
Because my heart desires you,
though I do not believe you would cure me.
And so it must be, that those who suffer will continue to suffer,
praising your name.
COMMENTS
5 responses to “An Alcoholic Enters the Gates of Heaven – Czeslaw Milosz”
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Powerful piece!
Awesome piece!
Who can know the mind of God?
Thanks.
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PS- I took accordian lessons for about 2 months when the teacher mercifully suggested to my father that I might enjoy baseball a bit more.
Milosz was a great man with hearty appetites. He liked alcohol but also wrote a poem about loving strawberry jam. From my reading it seems he managed to control his drinking until the completion of the day’s work, and then he drank both socially and heavily, especially during his later years in California. Perhaps not alcoholic but he was probably alcohol dependent. This poem reflects his insight
into the craving of an alcoholic and also it mitigates the moral guilt associated with alcoholism by attributing a genetic component or predisposition to addticion..
Milosz is one of my heroes and not only a pre-eminent poet of the 20th centruy but also one of the great thinkers and a genuine intellectual. He was a church goer because he liked to see people congregate and affirm to each other that there was a power outside of and greater than them. However, as to church doctrine, he was never sure as evidenced in his poem in “Second Space” a slender volume he
incredibly wrote in the tenth decade of his life.