My family in the sixteenth century already spoke Polish, just as many families in Finland spoke Swedish and in Ireland English, so I am a Polish not a Lithuanian poet. But the landscapes and perhaps the spirits of Lithuania have never abandoned me.

Selected Works: Poetry Collections: Trzy zimy - Three Winters - 1936 Ocalenie - Rescue - 1945 Światło dzienne - The Light of Day - 1954 Traktat poetycki - A Poetical Treatise - 1957 Król Popiel i inne wiersze - King Popiel and Other Poems - 1962 Gucio zaczarowany - Gucio Enchanted - 1965 Miasto bez imienia - City Without a Name - 1969 Gdzie słońce wschodzi i kedy zapada - Where the Sun Rises and Where it Sets -1974 Hymn o Perle - The Poem of the Pearl - 1982 Nieobjęta ziemia - The Unencompassed Earth - 1984 Kroniki - Chronicles - 1989 Dalsze okolice - Farther Surroundings - 1991 Na brzegu rzeki - Facing the River - 1994 To - It - 2000 Druga przestrzeń - The Second Space - 2002 Orfeusz i Eurydyka - Orpheus and Eurydice - 2003 Wiersze ostatnie - Last Poems) - 2006 Prose Collections: Zniewolony umysł - The Captive Mind - 1953 1Zdobycie władzy - The Seizure of Power - 1955 Dolina Issy - The Issa Valley - 1955 Rodzinna Europa - Native Realm - 1959 The History of Polish Literature - 1969 Widzenia nad Zatoką San Francisco - A View of San Francisco Bay Prywatne obowiązki - Private Obligations - 1974 Emperor of the Earth; Berkeley - 1976 Ziemia Ulro - The Land of Ulro - 1977 Ogród Nauk - The Garden of Science - 1979 Nobel Lecture - 1981 The Witness of Poetry - 1983 Zaczynając od moich ulic - Starting from My Streets - 1985 A mi Európánkról - About our Europe - 1986 Szukanie ojczyzny - In Search of a Homeland - 1992 Metafizyczna pauza - The Metaphysical Pause - 1995 Legendy nowoczesności - Modern Legends, War Essays - 1996 Zycie na wyspach - Life on Islands - 1997 Piesek przydrożny - Roadside Dog - 1997 Abecadło Milosza - Milosz's Alphabet - 1997 Inne Abecadło - A Further Alphabet - 1988 Wyprawa w dwudziestolecie - An Excursion through the Twenties and Thirties - 1999 Spiżarnia literacka - A Literary Larder - 2004 Przygody młodego umysłu - 2004 O podróżach w czasie; - On time travel - 2004 Translations by Miłosz: Talking to My Body by Anna Swir translated by Czesław Miłosz and Leonard Nathan - 1966.

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It would be more decorous not to live. To live is not decorous, Says he who after many years Returned to the city of his youth. There was no one left Of those who once walked these streets And now they had nothing, except his eyes. Stumbling, he walked and looked, instead of them, On the light they had loved, on the lilacs again in bloom.

City of My Youth - 1984.

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Only if we assume that a poet constantly strives to liberate himself from borrowed styles in search for reality, is he dangerous. In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot. And, alas, a temptation to pronounce it, similar to an acute itching, becomes an obsession which doesn't allow one to think of anything else. That is why a poet chooses internal or external exile. It is not certain, however, that he is motivated exclusively by his concern with actuality. He may also desire to free himself from it and elsewhere, in other countries, on other shores, to recover, at least for short moments, his true vocation — which is to contemplate Being.

The Nobel Prize in Literature Lecture - 1980.

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When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.

Meaning - 1991.

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A weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.

Before Majesty - 1978 - Translation by Czesław Miłosz and Lillian Vallee.

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Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.

Yellow Bicycle - Translation by Czesław Miłosz and Robert Hass.

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During the thirty years I have spent abroad I have felt I was more privileged than my Western colleagues, whether writers or teachers of literature, for events both recent and long past took in my mind a sharply delineated, precise form. Western audiences confronted with poems or novels written in Poland, Czechoslovakia or Hungary, or with films produced there, possibly intuit a similarly sharpened consciousness, in a constant struggle against limitations imposed by censorship. Memory thus is our force, it protects us against a speech entwining upon itself like the ivy when it does not find a support on a tree or a wall.

The Nobel Prize in Literature Lecture - 1980.

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Masculinity and femininity, elapsed, met in him And every shame, every grief, every love. If ever we accede to enlightenment, He thought, it is in one compassionate moment When what separated them from me vanishes And a shower of drops from a bunch of lilacs Pours on my face, and hers, and his, at the same time.

City of My Youth - 1984.

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Earth, what have I to do with thee? With your meadows where dumb beasts Grazed before the deluge without lifting their heads? What have I to do with your implacable births? So why this gracious melancholia? Is it because anger is no use?

Portal - 1978 - Translation by Czesław Miłosz and Lillian Vallee.

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I think that I am here, on this earth, To present a report on it, but to whom I don't know. As if I were sent so that whatever takes place Has meaning because it changes into memory.

Consciousness - Translation by Czesław Miłosz and Robert Hass.

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