Wordsmiths: Forget

No wordsmiths were featured last month, so we're definitely due. All credit for today's artisan goes to Steve McCoy, who first featured him on his blog. Being very limited in my knowledge of contemporary poetry, I've only vaguely heard of Czeslaw Milosz, the 1980 Nobel Prize Winner. Milosz was Lithuanian-born, raised in Poland, where he became a political dissident, and eventually emigrated to the United States. He died in 2004. [More on him here.]

Forget

Forget the suffering
You caused others.
Forget the suffering
Others caused you.
The waters run and run,
Springs sparkle and are done,
You walk the earth you are forgetting.

Sometimes you hear a distant refrain.
What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?
A childlike sun grows warm.
A grandson and a great-grandson are born.
You are led by the hand once again.

The names of the rivers remain with you.
How endless those rivers seem!
Your fields lie fallow,
The city towers are not as they were.
You stand at the threshold mute.