You talked but after your talking all the rest remains.
After your talking—poets, philosophers,
contrivers of romances—everything else,
All the rest deduced inside the flesh
Which lives & knows not just what is permitted.
I am a woman held fast now in a great silence.
Not all creatures have your need for words.
Birds you killed, fish you tossed into your boat,
In what words will they find rest & in what heaven?
You received gifts from me; they were accepted.
But you don’t understand how to think about the dead.
The smell of winter apples, of hoarfrost, and of linen.
There are nothing but gifts on this poor, poor Earth.
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One response to “From Czeslaw Milosz’s “The Separate Notebooks””
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There is an excellent article in First Things on Milosz by Jeremy Driscol called “The Witness of Czeslaw Milosz”, November, 2004, that is available on line. He quotes a poem Milosz wrote near his death at 93: “Now You are closing down my five senses, slowly, / And I am an old man lying in darkness . . . / Liberate me from guilt, real and imagined. / Give me certainty that I toiled for Your glory. / In the hour of the agony of death, help me with Your suffering / Which cannot save the world from pain.”