Love means to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many. And… — Czesław Miłosz

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.

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.

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.