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pain, or languor. She stands aloof from its sexual entanglements, coolly ob–
serving the relation between herself and her body, her body and her (its)
lovers.
Swir alternates between an ecstatic acceptance of physicality and utter
disgust at the' inevitable triumph of matter over spirit. For her, all knowledge
begins in the body:
0, many riches,
many preciolls truths
growing immellse in a metaphysical echo,
many initiations,
delicate and startling
[ owe to you,
my
thigh.
("A Woman Talks
to
Her Thigh")
She has no need to idealize the body; she wants it to be seen as it is.
She can be whimsical, as in the poem "I Sleep and I Snore," in which "the
complete happiness" is declared to be a body suffused with snoring. Or she
can
be grim:
[ will become kidney bilure
or the gangrene orthe large intestine.
And [ will expire in shame.
And the universe will expire with me,
reduced as it is
to
a kidney failure
and the gangrene of the large intestine.
(" Large [ntestine")
But she is always clear-eyed, always candid. Whether she is musing
about the powerful emotions of maternal love, clinically anticipating an end to
a love affair, or crowing about the physical exhilaration of running, Swir's
poems are always a fierce affirmation of self that imply intense gratitude for
the gift oflife.
That self-affirmation and its accompanying affirmation of the fullness of
life are also characteristic of Milosz. The many philosophical reflections in
Ullflttainable Earth
inquire into the existence of good and evil, the concept of
original sin, the possibility that not God but a diabolic power created this
world. But the Manichaean streak that has always been present in Milosz
coexists with a hunger for experience, what he calls his "immense amaze–
ment." He can express this in richly detailed sumptuous poems - the ones
that Zagajewski seems closest to - or straightforwardly, with a touch of
