“Summer Movies in Central Park”

For Juliusz Kronski in Paris

In the dim light on the trampled grasses
Girls lie still with soldiers in their arms.
Until the image alters: dark glance
Of a shoulder, an unbuttoned blouse.

Trees spring from the ancient bedrock
And the sprays of leaves fall like chords.
When nature becomes a theatre,
The silvery machinery of the skyline shifts.

The summits of the abstract city quiver
Under murky rainbows in the humid air.
Honeycombs of metal, or stalactites,
Divide the distance into sheer domains.

· · ·

I remember a field where the radiance
Of the burning city colors the dry wormwood
And crickets play, red from the glow,
Through which an army of smoke marches.

The water rushing along the road flutters
The dress on the corpse of a woman,
As the city descends long days and nights
Into legend, which won’t compensate for its disasters.

This memory contains a warning for those
Who spend their nights on soft couches:
An errant fire will often burn right through
The rosy stains on bedsheets.

Whoever enters the human microcosmos
Where marvels are performed should know
That it delivers, serenely, on a daily basis,
The retributions of a malignant fate.

They don’t hear this. As if the fresh earth
Had brought forth the first palm after the flood,
Trembling, they enter the quiet groves of sex
And simply give themselves to each other.

And yet even here, in the middle of Manhattan,
I could see how, at a warning sound,
Their faces blanch in the glare of the screen
And sudden fright weakens their legs.

Here, in the line of cars along 5th Avenue,
I see how the ambassador’s limousine glides
Past the white masts on which various flags
Of fictitious color sway in a mild breeze.

The poor envoys. Their labors are great,
As they, eyes asquint, compose a holy covenant
With duplicitous ink, or the pact
Between the Athenians and the Lacedemonians.

And what sort of power was granted to us,
Juliusz, when we foresaw the fate
Of our native realm, which was to be brought
Under the militarized feet of foreign powers.

We had barely mourned in our secret hearts
That Europe, mother of arts and sciences
With its old wisdom and bloody cobblestones,
As we placed it on the scales opposite the new faith.

Looking calmly at force, we know that the ones
Who want to rule the world will pass away
And we know that it isn’t always necessary
To live by the knife and the submachine gun.

We know that the ingenuity of our weapons
Is disastrous, that the whirlwind shreds banners,
And that the heirs to the glory of the Greek name
(But glory, our heritage from Greece)
Will last as long as humankind lasts.

And that this age of darkness will pass the way winters
Pass when strong sap rises under the brittle bark.
The smile of the Sophists, as in papal Rome,
Will knock the pen from the hand of the Inquisitors.

Just as once upon a time books were brought
From Constantinople to the northern lands,
The voices of wise men in the wild lands
Will become a source of creative power.

It is this honor, Juliusz, that is granted us:
To resurrect new forms, forged of gold.
In spite of the leisurely pace of change,
To mix valiant drinks for the future.

Greet the Parisian streets for me, please,
And the fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens.
Likewise the Seine where, to this day, I can see
The Cathedral’s arches and the sleeping boats.

I don’t know whether Montaigne’s monument
Still stands, whose white marble lips
A girl, as a joke, has painted blush red,
And run off, lowering her head in laughter.

There are, according to the Greek philosophers,
Seven stages to the journey. We may not be familiar
With them all, so let this wandering road
Through the ashes of war be your chosen path.

And receive as a gift an afternoon’s description
Of this excessively proud land
And with it my hope that books will preserve
This little drawing of Central Park.

Washington, D.C., 1948

—Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004)

(Translated, from the Polish, by Robert Hass and David Frick.)

“This is drawn from “Poet in the New World: Poems, 1946-1953.”