REPORT By Czeslaw MiloszJuly 01, 2001EmailShare

O Most High, you willed to create me a poet and now it is time

for me to present a report.

My heart is full of gratitude though I got acquainted with the

miseries of that profession.

By practicing it, we learn too much about the bizarre nature of

man.

Who, every hour, every day and every year is possessed by self-

delusion.

A self-delusion when building sandcastles, collecting postage

stamps, admiring oneself in a mirror.

Assigning oneself first place in sport, power, love, and the getting of money.

All the while on the very border, on the fragile border beyond

which there is a province of mumblings and wails.

For in every one of us a mad rabbit thrashes and a wolf pack

howls, so that we are afraid it will be heard by others.

Out of self-delusion comes poetry and poetry confesses to its flaw.

Though only by remembering poems once written is their author able to see the whole shame of it.

And yet he cannot bear another poet nearby, if he suspects him of being better than himself and envies him every scrap of praise.

Ready not only to kill him but smash him and obliterate him

from the surface of the earth.

So that he remains alone, magnanimous and kind toward his

subjects, who chase after their small self-delusions.

How does it happen then that such low beginnings lead to the

splendor of the word?

I gathered books of poets from various countries, now I sit

reading them and am astonished.

It is sweet to think that I was a companion in an expedition that

never ceases, though centuries pass away.

An expedition not in search of the golden fleece of a perfect form but as necessary as love.

Under the compulsion of the desire for the essence of the oak, of the mountain peak, of the wasp and of the flower of nasturtium.

So that they last, and confirm our hymnic song against death.

And our tender thought about all who lived, strived, and never

succeeded in naming.

For to exist on the earth is beyond any power to name.

Fraternally, we help each other, forgetting our grievances,

translating each other into other tongues, members, indeed, of a wandering crew.

How then could I not be grateful, if early I was called and the

incomprehensible contradiction has not diminished my wonder?

At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.

G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.” I long to make peace with my beautiful ordinariness. I’m learning to practice faithfulness in the midst of the mundane, believing that it is pleasing and significant to God and His Kingdom. It’s an ongoing process. In a recent commencement address to college graduates, Dr. James K.A. Smith stated, “Dreaming big is easy. The bigger challenge is to dream small… to deepen your embeddedness in the gritty realities of everyday life.” May we step willingly into the beauty of the ordinary – because, isn’t that kind of the point?

Like A Vocation

W. H. Auden

Not as that dream Napoleon, rumour’s dread and centre,

Before who’s riding all the crowds divide,

Who dedicates a column and withdraws,

Nor as that general favourite and breezy visitor

To whom the weather and the ruins mean so much,

Nor as any of those who always will be welcome,

As luck or history or fun,

Do not enter like that: all these depart.

Claim, certainly, the stranger’s right to pleasure:

Ambassadors will surely entertain you

With knowledge of operas and men,

Bankers will ask for your opinion

And the heiress’ cheek lean ever so slightly towards you,

The mountains and the shopkeepers accept you

And all your walks be free.

But politeness and freedom are never enough,

Not for a life. They lead

Up to a bed that only looks like marriage;

Even the disciplined and distant admiration

For thousands who obviously want nothing

Becomes just a dowdy illness. These have their moderate success;

They exist in the vanishing hour.

But somewhere always, nowhere particularly unusual,

Almost anywhere in the landscape of water and houses,

His crying competing unsuccessfully with the cry

Of the traffic or the birds, is always standing

The one who needs you, that terrified

Imaginative child who only knows you

As what the uncles call a lie,

But knows he has to be the future and that only

The meek inherit the earth, and is neither

Charming, successful, nor a crowd;

Alone among the noise and policies of summer,

His weeping climbs towards your life like a vocation.

Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Rom 8:21

Denise Levertov- Annunciation

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished, almost always a lectern, a book; alwaysthe tall lily.

       Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentionscourage.

       The engendering Spiritdid not enter her without consent.

         God waited.

She was freeto accept or to refuse, choiceintegral to humanness.

                  ____________________

Aren’t there annunciationsof one sort or anotherin most lives?

         Some unwillinglyundertake great destinies,enact them in sullen pride,uncomprehending.

More oftenthose moments      when roads of light and storm      open from darkness in a man or woman,are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despairand with relief.Ordinary lives continue.                                 God does not smite them.But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

                  ____________________

She had been a child who played, ate, sleptlike any other child–but unlike others,wept only for pity, laughedin joy not triumph.Compassion and intelligencefused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentousthan any in all of Time,she did not quail,

  only askeda simple, ‘How can this be?’and gravely, courteously,took to heart the angel’s reply,the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her wombInfinite weight and lightness; to carryin hidden, finite inwardness,nine months of Eternity; to containin slender vase of being,the sum of power–in narrow flesh,the sum of light.                     Then bring to birth,push out into air, a Man-childneeding, like any other,milk and love–

but who was God.

This was the moment no one speaks of,when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed,                                Spirit,                                          suspended,                                                            waiting.

                  ____________________

She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’She did not submit with gritted teeth,                                                       raging, coerced.Bravest of all humans,                                  consent illumined her.The room filled with its light,the lily glowed in it,                               and the iridescent wings.Consent,              courage unparalleled,opened her utterly.