# Rescue

- Author: [Czesław Miłosz](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz.md)
- Quotes: 9
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/rescue

## Quotes

> How can I live in this country
>
> Where the foot knocks against
>
> The unburied bones of kin?
>
> I hear voices, see smiles. I cannot
>
> Write anything; five hands
>
> Seize my pen and order me to write
>
> The story of their lives and deaths.
>
> Was I born to become
>
> a ritual mourner?
>
> I want to sing of festivities,
>
> The greenwood into which Shakespeare
>
> Often took me. Leave
>
> To poets a moment of happiness,
>
> Otherwise your world will perish.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/rescue/how-can-i-live.md)

> I will neither resurrect the past nor return.
>
> Sleep, Romeo, Juliet, on your headrest of stone feathers.
>
> I won't raise your bound hands from the ashes.
>
> Let the cat visit the deserted cathedrals,
>
> its pupil flashing on the altars. Let an owl
>
> nest on the dead ogive.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/rescue/i-will-neither.md)

> Love means to look at yourself
>
> The way one looks at distant things
>
> For you are only one thing among many.
>
> And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
>
> Without knowing it, from various ills —
>
> A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/rescue/love-means-to-look.md)

> Those dying here, the lonely
>
> Forgotten by the world,
>
> Our tongue becomes for them
>
> The language of an ancient planet.
>
> Until, when all is legend
>
> And many years have passed,
>
> On a great Campo di Fiori
>
> Rage will kindle at a poet's word.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/rescue/those-dying-here.md)

> From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife,
>
> what grain will be saved?My son, believe me, nothing remains,
>
> Only adult toil,
>
> the furrow of fate in the palm.
>
> Only toil,
>
> Nothing more.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/rescue/from-life-from.md)

> They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds
>
> To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds.
>
> I put this book here for you, who once lived
>
> So that you should visit us no more.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/rescue/they-used-to-pour.md)

> Only when two times, two forms are drawn
>
> Together and their legibility
>
> Disturbed, do you see that immortality
>
> Is not very different from the present
>
> And is for its sake. You pick a fragment
>
> Of grenade which pierced the body of a song
>
> On Daphnis and Chloe.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/rescue/only-when-two.md)

> — How is it, Chloe, that your pretty skirt
>
> Is torn so badly by the winds that hurt
>
> Real people, you who, in eternity, sing
>
> The hours, sun in your hair appearing
>
> And disappearing? How is that your breasts
>
> Are pierced by shrapnel, and the oak groves burn,
>
> While you, charmed, caring not at all, turn
>
> To run through forests of machinery and concrete
>
> And haunt us with the echoes of your feet?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/rescue/how-is-it-chloe.md)

> Someone will read as moral
>
> That the people of Rome or Warsaw
>
> Haggle, laugh, make love
>
> As they pass by martyrs' pyres.
>
> Someone else will read
>
> Of the passing of things human,
>
> Of the oblivion
>
> Born before the flames have died. But that day I thought only
>
> Of the loneliness of the dying,
>
> Of how, when Giordano
>
> Climbed to his burning
>
> There were no words
>
> In any human tongue
>
> To be left for mankind,
>
> Mankind who live on.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/rescue/someone-will-read.md)