They tell me to be a star, shining brightly for everyone to see.
I tell them I am a brick in a wall, not easily spotted.
They tell me to be a written book, everything in life predictable.
I tell them I am blank pages, my life story always changing.
They tell me to be Atlas, holding the weight of the world on my shoulders.
I tell them I am an ant, strong but meager.
They tell me to be a bottle, holding in every emotion.
I tell them I am a door, opening only to those with my key.
Queen of my tub, I merrily sing,
While the white foam rises high,
And sturdily wash, and rinse, and wring,
And fasten the clothes to dry;
Then out in the free fresh air they swing,
Under the sunny sky.
I wish we could wash from our hearts and our souls
The stains of the week away,
And let water and air by their magic make
Ourselves as pure as they;
Then on the earth there would be indeed
A glorious washing day!
Along the path of a useful life
Will heart’s-ease ever bloom;
The busy mind has no time to think
Of sorrow, or care, or gloom;
And anxious thoughts may be swept away
As we busily wield a broom.
I am glad a task to me is given
To labor at day by day;
For it brings me health, and strength, and hope,
And I cheerfully learn to say-
“Head, you may think; heart, you may feel;
But hand, you shall work always!”
Czesław Miłosz defected from Poland to the West in 1951. In 1960 he began teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, where he lived most of the time until 2000, when he moved back to Krakow; he died in 2004.
There are many reasons why I have recently wanted to read from the writings of Milosz in several genres. After I had already started on A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry, which he compiled in his 80’s and which is essentially a gift to modern readers, I discovered that this kind and generous man had been teaching at Berkeley during the years when I was deciding where to go to college. Berkeley was one of my top three choices back then. In the Now, my mind wandered into the land of “What if?” What if I had attended Berkeley and had known Professor Miłosz as a poetry teacher?
Ah, but he didn’t teach poetry. He taught Slavic literature, and many of his colleagues didn’t even know he was a poet, until he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980. So if I had attended “Cal,” I would probably not have known of his existence until now anyway, and that would have made me a little sad.
As it is, the fact that he lived in the Berkeley hills (where my grandmother spent most of her life) for 40 years, and wrote many poems during that time about his experience in and of California and its landscape, draws me to him powerfully. One more thing that links us: his father and my grandfather were both born in Riga, Latvia, probably about the same time. Here is a poem that builds a bridge in his heart from a church in Berkeley back to his homeland and to his dear mother.
WITH HER
Those poor, arthritically swollen knees Of my mother in an absent country. I think of them on my seventy-fourth birthday As I attend early Mass at St. Mary Magdalen in Berkeley. A reading this Sunday from the Book of Wisdom About how God has not made death And does not rejoice in the annihilation of the living. A reading from the Gospel according to Mark About a little girl to whom he said: “Talitha, cumi!” This is for me. To make me rise from the dead And repeat the hope of those who lived before me, In a village near Danzig, in a dark November, When both the mournful Germans, old men and women, And the evacuees from Lithuania would fall ill with typhus. Be with me, I say to her, my time has been short. Your words are now mine, deep inside me: “It all seems now to have been a dream.”
There are many reasons why I have recently wanted to read from the writings of Milosz in several genres. After I had already started on A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry, which he compiled in his 80’s and which is essentially a gift to modern readers, I discovered that this kind and generous man had been teaching at Berkeley during the years when I was deciding where to go to college. Berkeley was one of my top three choices back then. In the Now, my mind wandered into the land of “What if?” What if I had attended Berkeley and had known Professor 
