Thursday, December 30, 2021

awakened

'you can stop worrying now'


In advanced age, my health worsening, 
I woke up in the middle of the night,
and experienced a feeling of happiness
so intense and perfect that in all my life
I had only felt its premonition.
And there was no reason for it
It didn't obliterate consciousness;
the past which I carried was there,
together with my grief.
And it was suddenly included,
was a necessary part of the whole.
As if a voice were repeating:
"You  can stop worrying now;
everything happened just as it had to.
You did what was assigned to you,
and you are not required anymore
to think of what happened long ago."
The peace I felt was a closing of accounts
and was connected with the thought of death.
The happiness on this side was
like an announcement of the other side.
I realized that this was an undeserved gift
and I could not grasp by what grace
it was bestowed on me.





Czeslaw Milosz
Photo:  Peter Bowers






Friday, December 24, 2021

lute music


The Earth will be going on a long time
Before it finally freezes;
Men will be on it; they will take names,
Give their deeds reasons.
We will be here only
As chemical constituents—
A small franchise indeed.
Right now we have lives,
Corpuscles, Ambitions, Caresses,
Like everybody had once—

Here at the year’s end, at the feast
Of birth, let us bring to each other
The gifts brought once west through deserts—
The precious metal of our mingled hair,
The frankincense of enraptured arms and legs,
The myrrh of desperate, invincible kisses—
Let us celebrate the daily
Recurrent nativity of love,
The endless epiphany of our fluent selves,
While the earth rolls away under us
Into unknown snows and summers,
Into untraveled spaces of the stars.






Kenneth Rexroth
Photo:  Peter Bowers







Monday, December 13, 2021

priceless gifts


An empty day without events.
And that is why
it grew immense
as space. And suddenly
happiness of being
entered me.

I heard 
in my heartbeat
the birth of time
and each instant of life
one after the other 
came rushing in
like priceless gifts.





Anna Swir (Swirszczynska)
Talking to My Body
Translation: Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
Photo:  Peter Bowers