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"It is extraordinary that ‘Encounter’ is separated by 35 years from Milosz’s poem ‘Gift’ (the piece I started these reflections with) and yet seems to have so much in common with it. It is as though ‘Gift’ closes a small circle in his work which, for me, is more successful than the large orbits of his other grander pieces. With ‘Encounter’ he makes use of the same simple and direct style as found in the later poem. And like that poem, it is incredible how far he takes the reader in such a short interval.

The one feature that clearly distinguishes the two poems is the time-frame in which the poem exists and this difference gives rise to a difference in form. ‘Gift’ is one moment, and that moment is lived through in one stanza which holds it together. That poem does have a simple sequential quality, but it is not just a sequence of events – it is a sequence of images and feelings.

With ‘Encounter’ Milosz is dealing with memory and events separated by a great gap in time – or perhaps more correctly, the one event looked at twice from different times. And this event is not so much one moment but one moment interrupted by a happening – the quiet monotonous motion of the wagon and the thoughts of those travelling on it, jolted as a hare flashes across the road in front of them.

Just as the hare’s sudden presence interrupts the travellers’ awareness, the poem interrupts the awareness of the reader by its sudden shift in time: “That was long ago.” It is interesting that this fracture in the time-frame is quite similar to that used in Robert Creeley’s ‘The Long Road…’ (which I looked at last week) when he writes in a plain manner, “We all grew up”. And in both poems the following lines makes clear the nature of that fracture: the events that have occurred in between that moment in the wagon and the point of recollection. In both cases it is really death that has happened.

To extend the comparison further, the two poems – having created this shift in time and perspective – resolve the implications of it differently. For Creeley, there is the expected sense of longing and, even more directly, anxiety in the line:

Where are they now?

It is significant that the poem hangs on a question. With Milosz, the effect would’ve been the same had he ended the poem on the third last line, with his question:

O my love, where are they (?)…

While he doesn’t attempt an explicit answer to this question he does qualify it with the last line:

I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

So where Creeley’s poem ends with the hint of the existential, Milosz finds a kind of mystery which cannot be understood, but hides behind such moments. It is as though the hare has become a symbol for the unexpected and ultimately life enforcing nature of existence. Yet, there is also a hint of uncertainty, I think. The fact that the last line must explicitly state his feeling might suggest that it is a conscious movement towards hope. And that movement, sudden like the hare’s, inverts the meaning. Perhaps hope is just that: an inversion of our expectation and experience."
- Noel Duffy

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Czeslaw Milosz's "Meaning" is a moving paean of optimism in the face of a world fraught with uncertain troubles; a spiritual ballast of faithfulness, rebuffing the common cynicism of many who disdain the possibility of a greater reality than this world.

Czeslaw Milosz, a Polish Catholic who joined the Resistance against the Nazi Occupation, originally wrote this poem in his native language. Originally titled with the French word "Sens" (which means "meaning," but also "direction," and "sense"), Milosz later translated his work into English.

The poet expresses a boundless hope, one that exposes the ultimate duplicity of a passing world-one in which those who live on "this side" must confront.

"The lining of the world" emphasizes a higher order of life has persists in the face of the mundane. "Lining" speaks, perhaps, of an unseen yet grand texture, a beautiful embroidery waiting to be discovered, or a structure beneath that supports everything, yet remains unnoticed.

"The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset."

Bird, representing biological life, times, and seasons that move about the earth; cycles of nature which capture a calm beauty, no matter how patterned.

Mountain represents the deliberate elements of our world, not just natural phenomena, but also the institutions, like Mount Sinai, where the Ten Commandments were given to the Jews, or the Catholic Church, which claims the Apostle Peter (or "stone") as its founder.

[etInfoTable "Meaning", by Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004)]

When I die, I will see the lining of the world.

The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.

The true meaning, ready to be decoded.

What never added up will add Up,

What was incomprehensible will be comprehended.

- And if there is no lining to the world?

If a thrush on a branch is not a sign,

But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day

Make no sense following each other?

And on this earth there is nothing except this earth?

- Even if that is so, there will remain

A word wakened by lips that perish,

A tireless messenger who runs and runs

Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies,

And calls out, protests, screams.[/etInfoTable]

By listing "sunset" in the final of three terms, the poet indicates the twilight of established orders, the end of reigns and dynasties, the fading of hopes and dreams, and the sad certainty that all beautiful things, even as they manifest a greater glory in their diminution, must ultimately disappear and give way to blackness and night.

"The true meaning" is a loaded phrase, including the word "true,"which elicits respect and derision. For the poet, the "true meaning," the end of the story, the resolution and explanation of all things, will be revealed.

The missing pieces of one's broken life will come together and "add Up." The capitalization of this little preposition, positioned at the very end, suggests that the open security of whatever questions have puzzled mankind will have found their peaceful termination.

The poet rebuffs repudiation with hopeful faith. "If there is no lining," if there is no hidden beauty not yet revealed, then the "thrush on a branch" still represents a part of a greater whole. The two basic elements of "thrush" and "branch," and perhaps by extension, the basic processes of life, death, and existence as a whole are still part of a larger creation.

Just like the thrushes and branches of isolated simplicity, night and day reveal the staggering systems of life beyond the comprehension of one man. Almost chiding the inclination that "on this earth" there is nothing "except this earth," Milosz expresses his faithful certitude of a world "beyond" this world.

"There will remain," continues the poet, "a word wakened by lips that perish." "Remain," what stays over, what lasts, what endures in spite of times and seasons, reigns and deaths, there remains a word. The poet's words remain, certainly. "Perish" implies complete disappearance, sometimes through privation or violence, without a trace. The lips that speak the word will go away, not one trace of them remaining, but the wakened word will continue, an ever-present sign of the lips that are no more.

"A word" is described as a "tireless" messenger-one that does not just bear a message, but represents the one who sent it. "Tireless" indicates that this word is unstoppable, unceasing, interminable.

Stressing the simplicity of this indefatigable word, the poet repeats "runs and runs." Relentless in its energy, inexhaustible in its mission to be, this word travels beyond worlds; "Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies"-beyond the thrushes, the branches, the senseless night and day.

This word "calls out," emerging from a language to contact someone. Its purpose? It "protests," it refuses to die, it refuses to be reduced to nothing. It "screams," demanding to be heard.

Milosz's "Meaning" contends that life is not a barren exercise or a joke. This one word, or Word, lives and breathes in every one who believes.
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Poetry Analysis: 'Meaning' by Czeslaw Milosz | International

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Czeslaw Milosz's "Meaning" is a moving paean of optimism in the face of a world fraught with uncertain troubles; a spiritual ballast of faithfulness, rebuffing the common cynicism of many who disdain the possibility of a greater reality than this...

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Pola Negri, Polish Actress

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Holy Cross Church Warsaw

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1940s Maria Mela Painting

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1940s  Maria Mela (Melania) Muter (Mutermilch) (Polish-French artist, 1876-1967)

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timothy hughes rare and early newspapers

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1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising... WWII.... - RareNewspapers.com

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Timothy Hughes Rare & Early Newspapers offers the largest inventory of original historic newspapers for sale, all guaranteed authentic and all at great prices.

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1
We, whose lungs fill with the sweetness of day.
Who in May admire trees flowering
Are better than those who perished.

We, who taste of exotic dishes,
And enjoy fully the delights of love,
Are better than those who were buried.

We, from the fiery furnaces, from behind barbed wires
On which the winds of endless autumns howled,
We, who remember battles where the wounded air roared in
paroxysms of pain.
We, saved by our own cunning and knowledge.

By sending others to the more exposed positions
Urging them loudly to fight on
Ourselves withdrawing in certainty of the cause lost.

Having the choice of our own death and that of a friend
We chose his, coldly thinking: Let it be done quickly.

We sealed gas chamber doors, stole bread
Knowing the next day would be harder to bear than the day before.

As befits human beings, we explored good and evil.
Our malignant wisdom has no like on this planet.

Accept it as proven that we are better than they,
The gullible, hot-blooded weaklings, careless with their lives.

2
Treasure your legacy of skills, child of Europe.
Inheritor of Gothic cathedrals, of baroque churches.
Of synagogues filled with the wailing of a wronged people.
Successor of Descartes, Spinoza, inheritor of the word 'honor',
Posthumous child of Leonidas
Treasure the skills acquired in the hour of terror.

You have a clever mind which sees instantly
The good and bad of any situation.
You have an elegant, skeptical mind which enjoys pleasures
Quite unknown to primitive races.

Guided by this mind you cannot fail to see
The soundness of the advice we give you:
Let the sweetness of day fill your lungs
For this we have strict but wise rules.

3
There can be no question of force triumphant
We live in the age of victorious justice.

Do not mention force, or you will be accused
Of upholding fallen doctrines in secret.

He who has power, has it by historical logic.
Respectfully bow to that logic.

Let your lips, proposing a hypothesis
Not know about the hand faking the experiment.

Let your hand, faking the experiment
No know about the lips proposing a hypothesis.

Learn to predict a fire with unerring precision
Then burn the house down to fulfill the prediction.

4
Grow your tree of falsehood from a single grain of truth.
Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality.

Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself
So the weary travelers may find repose in the lie.

After the Day of the Lie gather in select circles
Shaking with laughter when our real deeds are mentioned.

Dispensing flattery called: perspicacious thinking.
Dispensing flattery called: a great talent.

We, the last who can still draw joy from cynicism.
We, whose cunning is not unlike despair.

A new, humorless generation is now arising
It takes in deadly earnest all we received with laughter.

5
Let your words speak not through their meanings
But through them against whom they are used.

Fashion your weapon from ambiguous words.
Consign clear words to lexical limbo.

Judge no words before the clerks have checked
In their card index by whom they were spoken.

The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason.
The passionless cannot change history.

6
Love no country: countries soon disappear
Love no city: cities are soon rubble.

Throw away keepsakes, or from your desk
A choking, poisonous fume will exude.

Do not love people: people soon perish.
Or they are wronged and call for your help.

Do not gaze into the pools of the past.
Their corroded surface will mirror
A face different from the one you expected.

7
He who invokes history is always secure.
The dead will not rise to witness against him.

You can accuse them of any deeds you like.
Their reply will always be silence.

Their empty faces swim out of the deep dark.
You can fill them with any feature desired.

Proud of dominion over people long vanished,
Change the past into your own, better likeness.

8
The laughter born of the love of truth
Is now the laughter of the enemies of the people.

Gone is the age of satire. We no longer need mock.
The sensible monarch with false courtly phrases.

Stern as befits the servants of a cause,
We will permit ourselves sycophantic humor.

Tight-lipped, guided by reasons only
Cautiously let us step into the era of the unchained fire.

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Child Of Europe Poem by Czeslaw Milosz - Poem Hunter

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1We, whose lungs fill with the sweetness of day.Who in May admire trees floweringAre better than those who perished. We, who taste of exotic dishes, And enjoy fully the delights of love, Are better than those who were buried.