Preparation

Still one more year of preparation.

Tomorrow at the latest I'll start working on a great book

In which my century will appear as it really was.

The sun will rise over the righteous and the wicked.

Springs and autumns will unerringly return,

In a wet thicket a thrush will build his nest lined with clay

And foxes will learn their foxy natures.

And that will be the subject, with addenda. Thus: armies

Running across frozen plains, shouting a curse

In a many-voiced chorus; the cannon of a tank

Growing immense at the corner of a street; the ride at dusk

Into a camp with watchtowers and barbed wire.

No, it won't happen tomorrow. In five or ten years.

I still think too much about the mothers

And ask what is man born of woman.

He curls himself up and protects his head

While he is kicked by heavy boots; on fire and running

He burns with bright flame; a bulldozer sweeps him into a clay pit.

Her child. Embracing a teddy bear. Conceived in ecstasy.

I haven't learned yet to speak as I should, calmly.

With not-quite truth

and not-quite art

and not-quite law

and not-quite science

Under not-quite heaven

on the not-quite earth

the not-quite guiltless

and the not-quite degraded

—Czeslaw Milosz