Encounter by Czeslaw Milosz

It’s been so hot here in SLC it’s nice to look at something chilly and read a poem with cold images.

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.

A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.

One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,

Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going

The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.

I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

For many years Milosz’s poetry was little noticed in the United States, though he was highly regarded in Poland. Recognition in Poland came in defiance of official government resistance to Milosz’s work. The communist regime refused to publish the books of a defector; for many years only underground editions of his poems were secretly printed and circulated in Poland. But in 1980, when Milosz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the communist government was forced to relent. A government-authorized edition of Milosz’s poems was issued and sold a phenomenal 200,000 copies. One sign of Milosz’s widespread popularity in Poland occurred when Polish workers in Gdansk unveiled a monument to their comrades who were shot down by the communist police. Two quotations were inscribed on the monument: one was taken from the Bible; the other was taken from a poem by Milosz.

Czeslaw Milosz, “Encounter” from The Collected Poems, 1931-1987. Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalites, Inc. Used by permission of the HarperCollins Publishers.

About Indigenous Lit

I am a hybrid Navajo living in Salt Lake City, Utah. I'm interested in Native issues and hope to present a different perspective of the world using my glorious sense of humor and lack of shame.

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