What Does It Mean

- Czeslaw Milosz

It does not know it glitters
It does not know it flies
It does not know it is this not that.
And more and more often, agape,
With my Gauloise dying out
Over a glass of red wine,
I muse on the meaning of being this not that.

Just as long ago, when I was twenty,
But then there was a hope I would be everything,
Perhaps even a butterfly or a thrush, by magic.
Now I see dusty district roads
And a town where the postmaster gets drunk every day
Melancholy with remaining identical to himself.

If only the stars contained me.
If only everything kept happening in such a way
That the so-called world opposed the so-called flesh.
Were I at least not contradictory. Alas.

[NOTE: This was originally posted on Nov 6, 2006.]