Thursday short poem -- Milosz's Veni Creator

I'm afraid this will be my last post until next Tuesday. I'm off later this morning for Northern California, where my gal and I shall visit my ma and also spend an extended weekend at the wedding of some dear friends.

But I shouldn't leave without the Thursday Short Poem. Yesterday, Annika posted a very fine poem by a former Cal grad student named Archibald Ammons. Today, I'll post one of my favorite shorter poems by former Cal prof (and Nobel laureate) Czeslaw Milosz, who died last week at 93. In 1998, I heard him read at a poetry festival in Claremont; he was magnificent.

Veni Creator

Come, Holy Spirit,
bending or not bending the grasses,
appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame,
at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards,
or when snow covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada.

I am only a human being: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked, you know it well,
that the statue in church lift its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But I understand that signs must be human,
therefore, call one person, anywhere on earth,
not me-after all I have some decency-
and allow me, when I look at that person,
to marvel at you.

Comments

[Rhesa]

Thanks for posting this, Hugo. Ever read Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Hours?

[Hugo]

Yes indeed, Rhesa! A good idea for a future short poem!