Baga

You whom I could not save Listen to me.   Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.   I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.   I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree. What strengthened me, for you was lethal.   You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one,   Inspiration of hatred with lyrical beauty;   Blind force with accomplished shape. Here is a valley of shallow Polish rivers. And an immense bridge   Going into white fog. Here is a broken city;   And the wind throws the screams of gulls on your grave   When I am talking with you. What is poetry which does not save   Nations or people?   A connivance with official lies,   A song of drunkards whose throats will be cut in a moment,   Readings for sophomore girls. That I wanted good poetry without knowing it,   That I discovered, late, its salutary aim,   In this and only this I find salvation. They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds   To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds.   I put this book here for you, who once lived   So that you should visit us no more.   - Czeslaw Milosz, Warsaw, 1945