Poetry Chaikhana Blog

Ivan M. Granger November 17th, 2008

This Only
by Czeslaw Milosz

English version by Robert Hass

A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map leads him there.
Or perhaps memory. Once long ago in the sun,
When snow first fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong, without reason,
Joy of the eyes. Everything was the rhythm
Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight,
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast in motion.
He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

— from The Collected Poems, by Czeslaw Milosz

/ Photo by sportsilliterate /

Mm. Not much to say. A beautiful place that calls us to a perfect, wordless thought:

He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

Czeslaw Milosz Poland (1911 - 2004) Timeline Secular or Eclectic Christian : Catholic

Czeslaw Milosz was a Polish-American was more than a Nobel Prize winning writer; he was for a rare voice of conscience, human insight, and gentle mysticism, in the midst of the Cold War era that defined the latter half of the 20th century.

Milosz was born in a small town in Lithuania during the final years of czarist Russia. At the end of World War I, while he was still a boy, his family moved to Vilna. There, he received a rigorous Roman Catholic education, but one that didn’t allow for much intellectual freedom or exploration.

After graduating from the University of Vilna in 1934 with a degree in law, Czeslaw Milosz traveled to Paris, where he connected with his uncle, a diplomat who put Milosz in touch with the Parisian arts and poetry community.

Czeslaw Milosz settled in Warsaw just before the German invasion at the beginning of World War II. He became a leading figure in the Warsaw literary scene, and championed art that was both personal and political, rather than merely an expression of aesthetic craft. As the war and occupation continued, Milosz became a writer for the Polish resistance movement.

At the end of the war, when Poland fell under Communist control, Milosz briefly became a diplomat in the service of the new government. However, in the early 1950s, he sought asylum in France, along with his wife and children.

In 1960, Milosz moved to the United States, becoming a professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Very late in life, Czeslaw Milosz returned to Poland as a cultural hero, and settled in Krakow. It is there that he died in 2004.

More poetry by Czeslaw Milosz

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