Life &Poetry Entropy | 18 Jun 2009
A Song on the End of the World
Czeslaw Milosz’s work is something so extraordinary in our epoch, that it seems to be a phenomenon that he has appeared on the surface of contemporary art from the mysterious depths of reality,” declared Krzysztof Dybciak in World Literature. “At a time when voices of doubt, deadness, and despair are the loudest; when writers are outstripping each other in negation of man, his culture, and nature; when the predominant action is destruction . . . , the world built by the author of ‘Daylight’ creates a space in which one can breathe freely, where one can find rescue.
It renders the world of surfaces transparent and condenses being. It does not promise any final solutions to the unleashed elements of nature and history here on earth, but it enlarges the space in which one can await the Coming with hope. Milosz does not believe in the omnipotence of man, and he has been deprived of the optimistic faith in the self-sufficiency of a world known only through empirical experience. He leads the reader to a place where one can see—to paraphrase the poet’s own formula regarding time—”Being raised above being through Being.”-
- Sourced From The Poetry Foundation
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.
On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.
And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.
By Czeslaw Milosz
Warsaw, 1944
Translated by Anthony Milosz
© Czeslaw Milosz Royalities, Inc.
on 22 Jun 2009 at 6:23 pm 1.Sandy said …
Such wisdom in the now; such truth in the simplicity; such joy in the expression of the end. Thank you. I visit often, I love your thoughtfulness, your artful presentation of your inner life.
Namaste,
Sandy