It Was Winter by Czeslaw Milosz

Winter came as it does in this valley.
After eight dry months rain fell
and the mountains, straw-colored, turned green for a while.
In the canyons where gray laurels
graft their stony roots to granite,
streams must have filled the dried-up creek beds.
Ocean winds churned the eucalyptus trees,
and under clouds torn by a crystal of towers,
prickly lights were glowing on the docks.

This is not a place where you sit under a cafe awning
on a marble piazza, watching the crowd,

Or play the flute at a window over a narrow street

While children’s sandals clatter in the vaulted entryway.

They heard of a land, empty and vast,

Bordered by mountains. So they went, leaving behind crosses

Of thorny wood and traces of campfires.

As it happened, they spent winter in the snow of a mountain pass,

And drew lots and boiled the bones of their companions;

And so afterward a hot valley where indigo could be grown

Seemed beautiful to them. And beyond, where fog

Heaved into shoreline coves, the ocean labored.

Sleep: rocks and capes will lie down inside you,

War councils of motionless animals in a barren place,

Basilicas of reptiles, a frothy whiteness.

Sleep on your coat, while your horse nibbles grass

And an eagle gauges a precipice.

When you wake up, you will have the parts of the world.

West, an empty conch of water and air.

East, always behind you, the voided memory of snow-covered fir.

And extending from your outspread arms

Nothing but bronze grasses, north and south.

We are poor people, much afflicted.

We camped under various stars,

Where you dip water with a cup from a muddy river

And slice your bread with a pocketknife.

This is the place; accepted, not chosen.

We remembered that there were streets and houses where we came from,

So there had to be houses here, a saddler’s signboard,

A small veranda with a chair. But empty, a country where

The thunder beneath the rippled skin of the earth,

The breaking waves, a patrol of pelicans, nullified us.

As if our vases, brought here from another shore,

Were the dug-up spearheads of some lost tribe

Who fed on lizards and acorn flour.

And here I am walking the eternal earth.

Tiny, leaning on a stick.

I pass a volcanic park, lie down at a spring,

Not knowing how to express what is always and everywhere:

The earth I cling to is so solid

Under my breast and belly that I feel grateful

For every pebble, and I don’t know whether

It is my pulse or the earth’s that I hear,

When the hems of invisible silk vestments pass over me,

Hands, wherever they have been, touch my arm,

Or small laughter, once, long ago over wine,

With lanterns in the magnolias, for my house is huge.

Berkeley, 1964