submitted by Prashant Paul,
"To Raja Rao"
Raja, I wish I knew
the cause of that malady.
For years I could not accept
the place I was in.
I felt I should be somewhere else.
A city, trees, human voices
lacked the quality of presence.
I would live by the hope of moving on.
Somewhere else there was a city of real presence,
of real trees and voices and friendship and love.
Link, if you wish, my peculiar case
(on the border of schizophrenia)
to the messianic hope
of my civilization.
Ill at ease in the tyranny, ill at ease in the republic,
in the one I longed for freedom, in the other for the end of
corruption.
Building in my mind a permanent polis
forever deprived of aimless bustle.
I learned at last to say: this is my home,
here, before the glowing coal of ocean sunsets,
on the shore which faces the shores of your Asia,
in a great republic, moderately corrupt.
Raja, this did not cure me
of my guilt and shame.
A shame of failing to be
what I should have been.
The image of myself
grows gigantic on the wall
and against it
my miserable shadow.
That's how I came to believe
in Original Sin
which is nothing but the first
victory of the ego.
Tormented by my ego, deluded by it
I give you, as you see, a ready argument.
I hear you saying that liberation is possible
and that Socratic wisdom
is identical with your guru's.
No, Raja, I must start from what I am.
I am those monsters which visit my dreams
and reveal to me my hidden essence.
If I am sick, there is no proof whatsoever
that man is a healthy creature.
Greece had to lose, her pure consciousness
had to make our agony only more acute.
We needed God loving us in our weakness
and not in the glory of beatitude.
No help, Raja, my part is agony,
struggle, abjection, self-love, and self-hate,
prayer for the Kingdom
and reading Pascal.
-- Czeslaw Milosz
(Berkeley, 1969 )
I stumbled upon this poem(and Milosz) when searching for the writer Raja
Rao. By far one of the most brilliant that I have read, and it brings
forth the best of Milosz. (Raja Rao was a great Indian writer, and with
R. K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand considered one of the trinity of Indian
writers in english.)
To me some of the elements of the poem come from the time Milosz spent
his time at Berkeley away from his native place Poland, like the first
part. But the poem is also an accurate description of the struggle with
the present, and the hope for a change that changes everything. Two
striking ideas -- original sin and "...I must start from where I am...",
I really love the way they are written here.
An absolutely amazing poem in my book.
Prashant.
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