ROBERT HASS AND SEAMUS HEANEY
Robert Hass:
This afternoon four of my favorite poets talked about
Milosz. Four Miloszs emerged. I don't have any theori es about hi s poetry ,
so I'm going
to
read through some of Milosz 's poems, not the most famous
ones, to give you some sense of hi s work. Then you figure out if you could
stand up and sit on a panel and in fifte en minutes say, "Here's what this
poet is about." For the young poets , here's a poem that he probably wrote
when he was nin eteen or twenty years old, publi shed in his first book, in
1933, called
A Poem on Frozen
Tin/e.
It's cal led " Artificer."
Burning, he walks in th e stream of fli ckerin g letters, clarin ets,
machin es throbbing quicker than the heart, lopped-off heads, silk
ca nvases, and he stops under the sky
and raises toward it his joined clenched fi sts.
Beli evers fallon th eir bellies, they suppose it is a monstrance that
sh ines,
but those are knu ckl es, sharp knuckles shin e that way, my friends. [. ..J
It sounds like the poem of an anarchist. Three years later, he wrote "The
Song," which is an early version of a kind of debate between the soul and
the Earth that goes on throughout Milosz's poems. Here, the speakers are
identified as "Woman" and "Chorus," and then a final speaker is called
"The last voices." He was twenty-three yea rs old.
WO lllnll:
Earth flows away from the shore where I stand ,
her trees and grasses, more and more distant, shin e.
Buds of chestnuts, lights of frail birches,
I won't see you anymore.
With worn-out people yo u move away,
w ith the sun waving like a fl ag you run toward the night,
I am afraid to stay here alon e, I have nothing except my body
-it glistens in th e dark, a star with crossed hands,
so that I am scared to look at myself. Earth,
do not abandon me.
C llOrllS:
Ice flowed down the rivers, trees spouted buoyant leaves,
ploughs went through the fields, doves in th e forest are cooing,
