Czesław Miłosz

Here’s a poem for this Saturday morning by Czesław Miłosz (June 30, 1911 – August 14, 2004), Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat.

Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature.

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.
--Czeslaw Milosz