Artificer Poem by Czeslaw Milosz
Artificer
Burning, he walks in the stream of flickering letters, clarinets,
machines throbbing quicker than the heart, lopped-off heads, silk
canvases, and he stops under the sky
and raises toward it his joined clenched fists.
Believers fall on their bellies, they suppose it is a monstrance that
shines,
but those are knuckles, sharp knuckles shine that way, my friends.
He cuts the glowing, yellow buildings in two, breaks the walls into
motley halves;
pensive, he looks at the honey seeping from those huge honeycombs:
throbs of pianos, children's cries, the thud of a head banging against
the floor.
This is the only landscape able to make him feel.
He wonders at his brother's skull shaped like an egg,
every day he shoves back his black hair from his brow,
then one day he plants a big load of dynamite
and is surprised that afterward everything spouts up in the explosion.
Agape, he observes the clouds and what is hanging in them:
globes, penal codes, dead cats floating on their backs, locomotives.
They turn in the skeins of white clouds like trash in a puddle.
While below on the earth a banner, the color of a romantic rose,
flutters,
and a long row of military trains crawls on the weed-covered tracks.
He wonders at his brother's skull shaped like an egg, every day he shoves back his black hair from his brow, then one day he plants a big load of dynamite and is surprised that afterward everything spouts up in the explosion. Expressions that goes so deep. tony
Powerful. It is like Picasso using words instead of oil to paint a picture and tell a story and doing so in his painfully [and pain-filled] intense manner. I am awed by his skill and depth..
For me this is a form of bizarre expressionism which I do enjoy. Very stark images and fascination results.
Weed-covered tracks! ! Silk and milk, With the muse of the military. Thanks for sharing this poem with us.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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10/6/2024 5:16:27 PM # 1.0.0.1119
one day he plants a big load of dynamite and is surprised that afterward everything spouts up in the explosion.......world, now in the crazy movement of superpower; explosion in the breast of humanity is easy work; soldiers and general peoples deaths are hilarious to the hypocrite warrior politicians; future of the world is very cruel in the hands of war monger leaders...poet greatly written this