awakened

'you can stop worrying now'

In advanced age, my health worsening, 

I woke up in the middle of the night,

and experienced a feeling of happiness

so intense and perfect that in all my life

I had only felt its premonition.

And there was no reason for it

It didn't obliterate consciousness;

the past which I carried was there,

together with my grief.

And it was suddenly included,

was a necessary part of the whole.

As if a voice were repeating:

"You  can stop worrying now;

everything happened just as it had to.

You did what was assigned to you,

and you are not required anymore

to think of what happened long ago."

The peace I felt was a closing of accounts

and was connected with the thought of death.

The happiness on this side was

like an announcement of the other side.

I realized that this was an undeserved gift

and I could not grasp by what grace

it was bestowed on me.

Czeslaw Milosz

Photo:  Peter Bowers

lute music

The Earth will be going on a long time

Before it finally freezes;

Men will be on it; they will take names,

Give their deeds reasons.

We will be here only

As chemical constituents—

A small franchise indeed.

Right now we have lives,

Corpuscles, Ambitions, Caresses,

Like everybody had once—

Here at the year’s end, at the feast

Of birth, let us bring to each other

The gifts brought once west through deserts—

The precious metal of our mingled hair,

The frankincense of enraptured arms and legs,

The myrrh of desperate, invincible kisses—

Let us celebrate the daily

Recurrent nativity of love,

The endless epiphany of our fluent selves,

While the earth rolls away under us

Into unknown snows and summers,

Into untraveled spaces of the stars.

Kenneth Rexroth

Photo:  Peter Bowers

priceless gifts

An empty day without events.

And that is why

it grew immense

as space. And suddenly

happiness of being

entered me.

I heard 

in my heartbeat

the birth of time

and each instant of life

one after the other 

came rushing in

like priceless gifts.

Anna Swir (Swirszczynska)

Talking to My Body

Translation: Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

Photo:  Peter Bowers