This World

Czeslaw Milosz

It appears that it was all a misunderstanding.

What was only a trial run was taken seriously.

The rivers will return to their beginnings.

The wind will cease in its turning about.

Trees instead of budding will tend to their roots.

Old men will chase a ball, a glance in the mirror–

They are children again.

The dead will wake up, not comprehending.

Till everything that happened has unhappened.

What a relief! Breathe freely, you who have suffered much. 

Faith

Czeslaw Milosz

The word Faith means when someone sees

A dew-drop or a floating leaf, and knows

That they are, because they have to be.

And even if you dreamed, or closed your eyes

And wished, the world would still be what it was,

And the leaf would still be carried down the river.

It means that when someone’s foot is hurt

By a sharp rock, he also knows that rocks

Are here so they can hurt our feet.

Look, see the long shadow cast by the trees;

And flowers and people throw shadows on the earth:

What has no shadow has no strength to live.

In Black Despair

Czeslaw Milosz

In grayish doubt and black despair,

I drafted hymns to the earth and the air,

pretending to joy, although I lacked it.

The age had made lament redundant.

So here’s the question — who can answer it —

Was he a brave man or a hypocrite?

[The will to see 

oneself as fragile]

The will to see oneself as 

fragile, fallible, 

liable to fail. 



To consider a stranger and 

hear, in the mind’s ear, 

one’s true voice



insisting: I must change.

Ordinary people do this

Patient urgent work



alone and together

day upon day upon day.

Like my mother, once,



leading her ailing mother 

back through the maze 

of our suburban scrawl,



past ache, past haze, 

past confusion and rage

toward a neat room



where waited prayer,

fear, forgiveness, 

grief, grace. This



is a poem about kin 

and neighbors and nations 

adrift, in error, under siege.



This is a ceasefire poem. 

Tracy K. Smith