Cosmos The In Lost
Right now I have several friends who are going through extreme suffering. There aren’t words to describe their conditions both because their pain goes beyond words and I don’t have the full details.
Poets frequently capture what is beyond the grasp of my own thinking and writing. And so here are some variations on the topic of suffering and insight (or lack thereof) from the pages of Polish poetry.
I ask you for prayers.
BODY
by Czeslaw Milosz in Facing the River
The human condition is not pain only.
Yet pain rules us and has much power.
Wise thoughts fail in its presence.
Starry skies go out.
From the center of the anatomical atlas
Where liver-red and clear-red of lungs
Meet cylindrical flesh-color of intestines,
Heralds of pain proceed with their muted calls,
From defenseless guardian posts at the frontier of the skin
Runs the alarm of being touched by steel or fire.
No chitinous or horn armor.
Nakedness under dresses and the masks of dancers.
And our obsession of undressing them on the stage
To know what they are when they pretend.
Scarlet liquor under the sun of the heart
Circulates, warms up, pulsates.
Visions, landscapes move to its rhythm
As does the brain, a gray moon, Luna.
On a gynecological chair open knees.
Defenseless viscera shattered by childbirth.
And the first scream, terror of exile into the world,
On a frozen river, in a stony city.
THORNS AND ROSES
by Zbigniew Herber in Elegy for Departure
Saint Ignatius
pale and fiery
passing by a rose
flung himself on the bush
mutilating his flesh
with the bell of his black frock
he wished to stifle
which gushed from earth as from a wound
and lying at the bottom
of the cradle of thorns
he saw
that the blood flowing from his brow
was clotting on his lashes
in the shape of a rose
and the blind hand
seeking out thorns
was pierced through
by petals’ soft touch
the defrauded saint wept
amid flowers’ mockeries
we seek happiness
from THE SILENCE OF JOB
by Anna Kamienska in Astonishments
Job
you whose mouth was
eloquent as ripples of rain
when you were arguing with God
about your morsel of life
why were you silent
when you got back everything
life health riches
almost a second happiness
Why don’t you protest now
You became as meek as the sea-grass
silent as a stone on sand
You seem to scowl when you look
mutter when you talk
You had a mouth full of arguments
like a harlot hurling insults
when you clamored for your due
Your loud No resounded to the heavens
your Yes is like the peep of a night bird
Explain why misery injury and suffering
while an everyday calm
searches for words
stammering like a schoolboy…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e39UmEnqY8
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