ESSE, by Czeslaw Milosz
I looked at the face, dumbfounded. The lights of metro stations flew by; I
didn't notice them. What can be done, if our sight lacks absolute power
to devour objects ecstatically, in an instant, leaving nothing more than
the void of an ideal form, a sign like a hieroglyph simplified from the
drawing of an animal or bird? A slightly snub nose, a high brow with
sleekly brushed back hair, the line of the chin--but why isn't the power
of sight absolute?--and in a whiteness tinged with pink two sculpted
holes, containing a dark, lustrous lava. To absorb that face but to have it
simultaneously against the background of all spring boughs, walls, waves,
in its weeping, its laughter, moving it back fifteen years, or ahead thirty.
To have. It is not even a desire. Like a butterfly, a fish, the stem of a plant,
only more mysterious. And so it befell me that after so many attempts
at naming the world, I am able only to repeat, harping on one string, the
highest, unique avowal beyond which no power can attain: I am, she
is. Shout, blow the trumpets, make thousands-strong marches, leap, rend
your clothing, repeating only: is!
She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of
existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a
river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and
trees.
didn't notice them. What can be done, if our sight lacks absolute power
to devour objects ecstatically, in an instant, leaving nothing more than
the void of an ideal form, a sign like a hieroglyph simplified from the
drawing of an animal or bird? A slightly snub nose, a high brow with
sleekly brushed back hair, the line of the chin--but why isn't the power
of sight absolute?--and in a whiteness tinged with pink two sculpted
holes, containing a dark, lustrous lava. To absorb that face but to have it
simultaneously against the background of all spring boughs, walls, waves,
in its weeping, its laughter, moving it back fifteen years, or ahead thirty.
To have. It is not even a desire. Like a butterfly, a fish, the stem of a plant,
only more mysterious. And so it befell me that after so many attempts
at naming the world, I am able only to repeat, harping on one string, the
highest, unique avowal beyond which no power can attain: I am, she
is. Shout, blow the trumpets, make thousands-strong marches, leap, rend
your clothing, repeating only: is!
She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of
existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a
river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and
trees.