Gift
- Czeslaw Milosz
A day so happy
Fog has lifted early, I work in the garden.
Hummingbirds are stopping over honeysuckle flowers
There is no thing on earth I want to possess.
I know no one worth my envying them.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I have forgotten
To think that once I was the same person, does not embarrass me.
In my body I feel no pain
When straghtening up, I see the blue sea sails.
My take
I read this poem in Jane Hirshfield's essay, "Facing the Lion." She mentions that while this poem is a "good" poem, a happy poem there is a lion lurking behind. For every poem that describes joy must also hold joy's shadow. All the things that Milosz describes here as pleasures are temporary. I changed something in the poem and made the joys permanent. I made the tense of the poem present. So instead of "Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden" -- I made it present tense. Now if you read the poem, it is describing the present, the now. Now the poem is spiritual. The person who reads it does not want to possess anything and has forgotten all evil, as long as he recites this poem.
Fog has lifted early, I work in the garden.
Hummingbirds are stopping over honeysuckle flowers
There is no thing on earth I want to possess.
I know no one worth my envying them.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I have forgotten
To think that once I was the same person, does not embarrass me.
In my body I feel no pain
When straghtening up, I see the blue sea sails.
My take
I read this poem in Jane Hirshfield's essay, "Facing the Lion." She mentions that while this poem is a "good" poem, a happy poem there is a lion lurking behind. For every poem that describes joy must also hold joy's shadow. All the things that Milosz describes here as pleasures are temporary. I changed something in the poem and made the joys permanent. I made the tense of the poem present. So instead of "Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden" -- I made it present tense. Now if you read the poem, it is describing the present, the now. Now the poem is spiritual. The person who reads it does not want to possess anything and has forgotten all evil, as long as he recites this poem.
The Tense of the Poem
I first met the poem in an essay
by Jane Hirshfield.
She said it was a happy poem,
though somewhere behind it
a lion was breathing.
The fog lifts.
Someone tends the garden.
Hummingbirds pause at the honeysuckle.
Nothing is worth possessing.
No one worth envying.
But I changed one small thing—
the tense.
Now the fog lifts each time you read.
The garden finds its gardener.
And somewhere inside the ribs
an old teacher clears his throat
and begins the song.
Singing oneness!
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