On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.
And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now....(more)
From "A Song on the End of the World" by Czeslaw Milosz, 1944. Complete poem at Poetry Foundation.
Photo by Mila Zinkova from Wikimedia Commons
2 comments:
What an interesting poem! I'm not familiar with it, or with the poet. I'm also not entirely sure what it means - thank goodness, certainty is so dull - but it (like most things for me) has a Buddhist quality to it. Reminds me of the old wild strawberry story:
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!
It seems to me you have a fine grasp on what the poem means--and I understand it a little better now myself, after reading the wild strawberry story.
I think I posted another Milosz poem a while back. I like his work a lot. He had an interesting life. There's a long bio at PF.
Post a Comment