If my fear
is an illusion,
so is my
hope.

..



You whom I could not save

Listen to me.  

Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.  

I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.  

I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.


What strengthened me, for you was lethal.  

You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one,  

Inspiration of hatred with lyrical beauty;  

Blind force with accomplished shape.


Here is a valley of shallow Polish rivers. And an immense bridge  

Going into white fog. Here is a broken city;  

And the wind throws the screams of gulls on your grave  

When I am talking with you.


What is poetry which does not save  

Nations or people?  

A connivance with official lies,  

A song of drunkards whose throats will be cut in a moment,  

Readings for sophomore girls.

That I wanted good poetry without knowing it,  

That I discovered, late, its salutary aim,  

In this and only this I find salvation.


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.  




                                                                                         Warsaw, 1945

                                                                                        
- by Czeslaw Milosz






st, 13 dec 13

i love stumbling upon advice from wizened sages,
who'd 'semble the tao of writing decent poetry
into a clever, lengthy monologue

read years earlier (just a few), it might save me
a hundred odd embarrassments
that, today, bear my name

like the time my kid balled his fists up
'cause i said so
but got knocked down, again, by the playground bully

not a Quakerly thing to do...
i'm still learning, too
(maybe i didn't teach the right stance?)

or perhaps we learn more by our failures;
my little boy's muscular, a confident wrestler, now...
gets along with everybody - go figure

and he writes pretty good poetry  -
all by himself.

To the two year old baby,
trapped in the body of a 31 year old man.
To the young lovers keeping eachothers addiction alive.
To the boy who got kicked out of school at 6,
for being agressive.
To the kitten of my neighbours, throwing up worms.
To the lady in the supermarket, with new shades of blue on her face every week.
To the people in the bar, all escaping something else.
To the ginger girl who was never understood, just diagnosed.

I want to apologise in the name of everybody who did not love you as much as you needed them to.