[lit-ideas] Re: April 18th poem

From: "Mirembe Nantongo" <nantongo@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 18:36:25 +0100
Many thanks to Marlena for Czeslaw Milosz. New to me, once again. I finally 
looked up the Nobel literature laureate list. Bad idea, as I am now 
astonished and disconcerted by how many completely strange (to me) names I 
find on it. Do I just fall down and go to sleep at a certain time of year, 
or what? What else have I missed over the years? Literature laureate list:

http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/index.html

And more on Milosz on the Nobel site, including this below, which is 
wonderful. Haven't we all had moments like this?

http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1980/poems-2-e.htm

Esse
----

I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of métro stations flew by; I 
didn't notice them. What can be done, if our sight lacks absolute power to 
devour objects ecstatically, in an instant, leaving nothing more than the 
void of an ideal form, a sign like a hieroglyph simplified from the drawing 
of an animal or bird? A slightly snub nose, a high brow with sleekly 
brushed-back hair, the line of the chin - but why isn't the power of sight 
absolute? - and in a whiteness tinged with pink two sculpted holes, 
containing a dark, lustrous lava. To absorb that face but to have it 
simultaneously against the background of all spring boughs, walls, waves, in 
its weeping, its laughter, moving it back fifteen years, or ahead thirty. To 
have. It is not even a desire. Like a butterfly, a fish, the stem of a 
plant, only more mysterious. And so it befell me that after so many attempts 
at naming the world, I am able only to repeat, harping on one string, the 
highest, the unique avowal beyond which no power can attain: I am, she is. 
Shout, blow the trumpets, make thousands-strong marches, leap, rend your 
clothing, repeating only: is!

She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of existing 
things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, 
suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.

                    ---  Czeslaw Milosz


<><><>
Best, MN 


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[lit-ideas] Re: April 18th poem

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