The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sat 2/16/2008)

[RetroLounge]

And Yet The Books

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
“We are, ” they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

Czeslaw Milosz

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Czeslaw Milosz was born June 30, 1911 in Seteiniai, Lithuania, as a son of Aleksander Milosz, a civil engineer, and Weronika, née Kunat. He made his high-school and university studies in Wilno, then belonging to Poland. A co-founder of a literary group "Zagary", he made his literary début in 1930, published in the 1930s two volumes of poetry and worked for the Polish Radio. Most of the war time he spent in Warsaw working there for the underground presses.

In the diplomatic service of the People's Poland since 1945, he broke with the government in 1951 and settled in France where he wrote several books in prose. In 1953 he received Prix Littéraire Européen.

In 1960, invited by the University of California, he moved to Berkeley where he has been, since 1961, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures.

Presented with an award for poetry translations from the Polish P.E.N. Club in Warsaw in 1974; a Guggenheim Fellow for poetry 1976; received a honorary degree Doctor of Letters from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1977; won the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1978; received the "Berkeley Citation" (an equivalent of a honorary Ph.D.) in 1978; nominated by the Academic Senate a "Research Lecturer" of 1979/1980.


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:hi:

RL

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. Nice.

:thumbsup: born in 1911 and still living? Cool! :donut: :hi:

[lizziegrace]

2. I can't think of a better legacy

than books...

:hug:

(second only to your children) ;)

[RetroLounge]

3. ...

:hug:

RL

[xchrom]

4. isn't that right?

and all the more reason to read more.

[RetroLounge]

9. and for people to buy more books...

:hide:

:hi:

RL

[hisownpetard]

5. Maybe you should print that out and hang it in your bookstore!

Thanks for the poem.

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

7. Good Suggestion...

Just did...

:hi:

RL

[Justpat]

6. This one is a keeper.

Throughout my crazy and wandering youth the one thing I would never part with was my books.

Beautiful poem.

[RetroLounge]

8. Same here...

Boxes followed me everywhere...

RL