WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.520 align:middle line:84% So where I want to do for half an hour 00:00:04.520 --> 00:00:07.280 align:middle line:84% is just take you through some of this. 00:00:07.280 --> 00:00:08.820 align:middle line:90% There are 50 poems. 00:00:08.820 --> 00:00:15.830 align:middle line:84% It took us two years of occasional work to do it. 00:00:15.830 --> 00:00:23.370 align:middle line:84% After when he fled Warsaw, he and his wife 00:00:23.370 --> 00:00:27.300 align:middle line:84% were immediately picked up by a German patrol, 00:00:27.300 --> 00:00:30.990 align:middle line:90% put in a detention camp. 00:00:30.990 --> 00:00:34.170 align:middle line:84% There were some kids playing football, soccer, 00:00:34.170 --> 00:00:37.590 align:middle line:84% on the field next to the camp, and he 00:00:37.590 --> 00:00:40.660 align:middle line:84% wrote notes and handed the kids and said, 00:00:40.660 --> 00:00:42.540 align:middle line:90% would you deliver these? 00:00:42.540 --> 00:00:45.390 align:middle line:84% And two, four, or five people that he knew they were still 00:00:45.390 --> 00:00:49.680 align:middle line:84% on the outskirts of Warsaw, and one of them 00:00:49.680 --> 00:00:52.050 align:middle line:84% somehow got delivered to a friend who gave it 00:00:52.050 --> 00:00:56.920 align:middle line:84% to the abbess of a convent that was right next to the detention 00:00:56.920 --> 00:00:57.420 align:middle line:90% center. 00:00:57.420 --> 00:00:59.430 align:middle line:84% And the abbess came over and pleaded 00:00:59.430 --> 00:01:01.860 align:middle line:84% Milosz's case, and he and his wife 00:01:01.860 --> 00:01:03.720 align:middle line:84% and his wife's mother who was with them, 00:01:03.720 --> 00:01:10.800 align:middle line:84% were released from the DP camp and made their way 00:01:10.800 --> 00:01:12.930 align:middle line:90% south to Kraków. 00:01:12.930 --> 00:01:15.870 align:middle line:84% And it was in Kraków that he was able to finish up 00:01:15.870 --> 00:01:19.610 align:middle line:84% his wartime poems and apply for this job. 00:01:19.610 --> 00:01:26.860 align:middle line:84% And after a while, he came back to see what Warsaw looked like, 00:01:26.860 --> 00:01:29.620 align:middle line:90% middle of 1945. 00:01:29.620 --> 00:01:33.145 align:middle line:84% Let's say so this is a poem called "In Warsaw." 00:01:33.145 --> 00:01:35.760 align:middle line:90% 00:01:35.760 --> 00:01:37.190 align:middle line:90% What are you doing-- 00:01:37.190 --> 00:01:39.120 align:middle line:90% let me look at the time. 00:01:39.120 --> 00:01:42.620 align:middle line:84% What are you doing here, poet, on the ruins 00:01:42.620 --> 00:01:46.280 align:middle line:84% Of Saint John's cathedral on this sunny 00:01:46.280 --> 00:01:48.500 align:middle line:90% Day in spring? 00:01:48.500 --> 00:01:51.740 align:middle line:84% What are you thinking here, where the wind 00:01:51.740 --> 00:01:53.930 align:middle line:84% Blowing from the Vistula scatters 00:01:53.930 --> 00:01:56.930 align:middle line:84% The red dust of the brick rubble? 00:01:56.930 --> 00:01:58.550 align:middle line:90% You swore never to be 00:01:58.550 --> 00:02:00.680 align:middle line:90% A ritual mourner. 00:02:00.680 --> 00:02:02.450 align:middle line:90% You swore never to touch 00:02:02.450 --> 00:02:05.030 align:middle line:90% The deep wounds of your nation 00:02:05.030 --> 00:02:07.190 align:middle line:90% So you would not make them holy 00:02:07.190 --> 00:02:11.620 align:middle line:84% With the accursed holiness that pursues 00:02:11.620 --> 00:02:15.450 align:middle line:84% Descendants for many generations. 00:02:15.450 --> 00:02:18.330 align:middle line:90% But the lament of Antigone 00:02:18.330 --> 00:02:20.220 align:middle line:90% Searching for her brother 00:02:20.220 --> 00:02:22.230 align:middle line:90% Is beyond the power 00:02:22.230 --> 00:02:23.370 align:middle line:90% Of endurance. 00:02:23.370 --> 00:02:24.210 align:middle line:90% And the heart 00:02:24.210 --> 00:02:26.910 align:middle line:84% Is a stone in which it is enclosed, 00:02:26.910 --> 00:02:29.520 align:middle line:90% Like an insect, the dark love 00:02:29.520 --> 00:02:32.400 align:middle line:90% Of a most unhappy land. 00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:35.010 align:middle line:90% I did not want to love so. 00:02:35.010 --> 00:02:37.470 align:middle line:90% That was not my design. 00:02:37.470 --> 00:02:40.050 align:middle line:90% I did not want to pity so. 00:02:40.050 --> 00:02:42.300 align:middle line:90% That was not my design. 00:02:42.300 --> 00:02:45.900 align:middle line:84% My pen is lighter than a hummingbird's feather. 00:02:45.900 --> 00:02:46.680 align:middle line:90% This burden 00:02:46.680 --> 00:02:48.660 align:middle line:90% Is too much for it to bear. 00:02:48.660 --> 00:02:51.000 align:middle line:90% How can I live in this country 00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:52.830 align:middle line:90% Where the foot knocks against 00:02:52.830 --> 00:02:55.770 align:middle line:90% The unburied bones of kin? 00:02:55.770 --> 00:02:58.860 align:middle line:90% I hear voices, see smiles. 00:02:58.860 --> 00:02:59.490 align:middle line:90% I cannot 00:02:59.490 --> 00:03:00.510 align:middle line:90% Write anything. 00:03:00.510 --> 00:03:01.350 align:middle line:90% Five hands 00:03:01.350 --> 00:03:03.780 align:middle line:84% Seize my pen and order me to write 00:03:03.780 --> 00:03:06.240 align:middle line:84% The story of their lives and deaths. 00:03:06.240 --> 00:03:07.800 align:middle line:90% Was I born to become 00:03:07.800 --> 00:03:09.240 align:middle line:90% A ritual mourner? 00:03:09.240 --> 00:03:11.850 align:middle line:90% I wanted to sing of festivities, 00:03:11.850 --> 00:03:14.190 align:middle line:84% The greenwood into which Shakespeare 00:03:14.190 --> 00:03:15.760 align:middle line:90% Often took me. 00:03:15.760 --> 00:03:16.690 align:middle line:90% Leave 00:03:16.690 --> 00:03:19.690 align:middle line:90% The poets a moment of happiness, 00:03:19.690 --> 00:03:23.080 align:middle line:84% Otherwise your world will perish. 00:03:23.080 --> 00:03:26.080 align:middle line:90% It's madness to live without joy 00:03:26.080 --> 00:03:28.510 align:middle line:90% And to repeat to the dead 00:03:28.510 --> 00:03:30.460 align:middle line:90% Whose part was to be gladness 00:03:30.460 --> 00:03:32.440 align:middle line:90% Of action in thought and in the 00:03:32.440 --> 00:03:35.380 align:middle line:84% Flesh was to be singing in feasts 00:03:35.380 --> 00:03:37.660 align:middle line:90% Only the two salvaged words, 00:03:37.660 --> 00:03:41.310 align:middle line:90% Truth and justice. 00:03:41.310 --> 00:03:45.170 align:middle line:84% So this is a poem he wrote before he 00:03:45.170 --> 00:03:47.210 align:middle line:90% arrived in the United States. 00:03:47.210 --> 00:03:53.060 align:middle line:84% He was flown from Warsaw to London. 00:03:53.060 --> 00:03:55.520 align:middle line:84% He actually had lunch with T.S. Eliot, 00:03:55.520 --> 00:03:57.950 align:middle line:84% Faber, because he'd read his poem 00:03:57.950 --> 00:03:59.780 align:middle line:90% and he arrived in New York. 00:03:59.780 --> 00:04:02.120 align:middle line:84% The consulate in New York had arranged 00:04:02.120 --> 00:04:08.630 align:middle line:84% for him and his wife an apartment on the West Side 00:04:08.630 --> 00:04:13.940 align:middle line:90% on about 74th Street. 00:04:13.940 --> 00:04:19.519 align:middle line:84% The consulate was on the East side at Lexington and 71st. 00:04:19.519 --> 00:04:25.610 align:middle line:84% So in January, his walk across Central Park, 00:04:25.610 --> 00:04:27.930 align:middle line:90% must have been his way to work. 00:04:27.930 --> 00:04:29.390 align:middle line:90% It took a while for him. 00:04:29.390 --> 00:04:33.370 align:middle line:84% We'll get to that poem, his Central Park poem.