R.I.P. Czeslaw Milosz

Thank you, Jjorge.

Yes, thanks, Jjorge. That's a perfect way to remember a poet.

Washington Post article on his death

I <hanging head> don't know this poet, but I am sorry to hear of his passing, especially now that I've read what a great man as well as a great poet he was. That's a wonderful poem you posted, Jjorge -- I love that last line about straightening up to see blue seas and sails. I can see them too.


(And it is GREAT to see you Jjorge!)


This is one of the poems that the LA Times printed in his obituary, "Helene's Religion," from a collection in the book "Road-Side Dog" (1998):

On Sunday I go to church and pray

with all the others.

Who am I to think that I am different?

Enough that I don't listen to what the

priests blabber in their sermons.

Otherwise, I would have to concede

that I reject common sense.


and also from the LA Times:
.... the workers in Gdansk during the Solidarity protests in 1980 decided to put the words of one of Milosz's poems on the monument commemorating laborers killed by the Communist authorities during the 1970 strikes at the shipyard.

Several lines from the poem, "You Who Wronged," are engraved on the monument. As much as they pay tribute to the labor movement's struggle, they are a reminder of the poet's mission:

You who wronged a simple man

Do not feel safe. A poet remembers.

You can kill one, but another is born.

Jjorge, remember at the a2k meet in San Francisco when some of us rode a cab driven by a fellow from Russia and you had a jolly conversation with him? Were you two talking about Milosz then, or am I remembering wrong?

osso, Mac, Piffie,

Nice to hear from you all!

Bear with me as I (obsessively) pour all of my time into landscaping my new home. I'll be spending more time here at A2K in the not-too-distant future.

your friend, jjorge

hmmmm... It could have been,
but I seem to remember us talking about Anna Akhmatova.

Oh, well, they sound the same to me (she says kidding)...you were talking fast.. I think you did talk about more than one person. Plus, I remember we were busy being rollercoastered over hill and dale, ala Steve McQueen and Bullitt.

Milosz' death is another sad loss for poetry; another writer of substance gone.

Earth Again

They are incomprehensible, the things of this earth.
The lure of waters. The lure of fruits.
Lure of two breasts and the long hair of a maiden.
In rouge, in vermillion, in that color of ponds
Found only in the Green Lakes near Wilno.
An ungraspable multitudes swarm, come together
In the crinkles of tree bark, in the telescope's eye,
For an endless wedding,
For the kindling of eyes, for a sweet dance
In the elements of air, sea, earth, and subterranean caves,
So that for a short moment there is no death
And time does not unreel like a skein of yarn
Thrown into an abyss

(Jjorge; I hope to see you around really soon. Here's wishing that the landscaping goes well.)

That we were Osso, but a fine time was had by all regardless!

drom,

I will be back indeed.

The landscaping is coming along fine. I am now putting the finishing touches on a canoe/kayak rack in a back corner of my lot, up against a newly completed six-foot fence.

My next task is to construct a 4 ft wide by 7 foot tall arbor. The latter will provide the entrance from my patio to the rest of my back yard. The arbor will be flanked by 2 white lilacs (which I already planted several months ago).

The patio, approx. 26ft x 20ft, is just outside my back door and is framed by a 3 1/2 foot picket fence and by mine and my neighbor's garages.
At the far end of the patio, in front of my neighbors garage, is a raised flower bed 16 feet long by 30 inches wide and 20 inches high. (I completed that in May)

The patio surface is the next project after the arbor. I have a big stack of patio stone ready to go but I will have to first do some serious preparation of the ground as it is currently bumpy and uneven.

At the rate I'm going it'll probably be October before the patio is completed, and probably next July before the whole yard is completed.

Oops, I'm rambling here. I guess I just wanted you all to know that I'm not twiddling my thumbs, but have been absent from A2K
and all of you great folks for a REASON.

later, jjorge

Hey Pffica what does those stone monoliths mean to u ?

They are the stuff that dreams are made of, Algis, the haunting sentinels from an ancient age. They wait for the honors once bestowed on them by mortals to return so that magic can reign again in the Gray Isles.

They are also the largest of the Callanish stones from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides (or is that the Inner Hebrides?). Love dem stones. Do you like them? Isn't it cool the way the cloud puff is formed to look just like a cartoon thought balloon?




(Hi Jjorge!....... Good luck landscaping!)

Hey, jjorge:

It seems like a difficult task that you have on your hands, but I'm glad to hear that you'll be back soon .

I think that this Milosz poem is quite apt:

Let us not talk philosophy, drop it, Jeanne.
So many words, so much paper, who can stand it.
I told you the truth about my distancing myself.
I've stopped worrying about my misshapen life.
It was no better and no worse than the usual human tragedies.

For over thirty years we have been waging our dispute
As we do now, on the island under the skies of the tropics.
We flee a downpour, in an instant the bright sun again,
And I grow dumb, dazzled by the emerald essence of the leaves.

We submerge in foam at the line of the surf,
We swim far, to where the horizon is a tangle of banana bush,
With little windmills of palms.
And I am under accusation: That I am not up to my oeuvre,
That I do not demand enough from myself,
As I could have learned from Karl Jaspers,
That my scorn for the opinions of this age grows slack.

I roll on a wave and look at white clouds.

You are right, Jeanne, I don't know how to care about the salvation of my soul.
Some are called, others manage as well as they can.
I accept it, what has befallen me is just.
I don't pretend to the dignity of a wise old age.
Untranslatable into words, I chose my home in what is now,
In things of this world, which exist and, for that reason, delight us:
Nakedness of women on the beach, coppery cones of their breasts,
Hibiscus, alamanda, a red lily, devouring
With my eyes, lips, tongue, the guava juice, the juice of la prune de Cythère,
Rum with ice and syrup, lianas-orchids
In a rain forest, where trees stand on the stilts of their roots.

Death, you say, mine and yours, closer and closer,
We suffered and this poor earth was not enough.
The purple-black earth of vegetable gardens
Will be here, either looked at or not.
The sea, as today, will breathe from its depths.
Growing small, I disappear in the immense, more and more free.