They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds. I put… — 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.

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.