Esse

Czeslaw Milosz

I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of metro
stations flew by; I didn't notice them. What can be done,
if our sight lacks absolute power to devour objects
ecstatically, in an instant, leaving nothing more than the
void of an ideal form, a sign like a hieroglyph simplified
from the drawing of an animal or bird? A slightly snub
nose, a high brow with sleekly brushed-back hair, the
line of the chin - but why isn't the power of sight
absolute? - and in a whiteness tinged with pink two
sculpted holes, containing a dark, lustrous lava. To
absorb that face but to have it simultaneiously against
the background of all spring boughs, walls, waves, in its
weeping, its laughter, moving it back fifteen years, or
ahead thirty. To have. It is not even a desire. Like a
butterfly, a fish, the stem of a plant, only more
mysterious. And so it befell me that after so many
attempts at naming the world, I am able only to repeat,
harping on one string, the highest, the unique avowel
beyond which no power can attain: I am, she is. Shout,
blow the trumpets, make thousands-strong marches,
leap, rend your clothing, repeating only: is!

She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the
immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering
because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering
because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds
and trees.

from Uncollected Poems (1954-1969)