The Mountains of Parnassus
Page 9
Why did he punish the tree? Had it wronged him in some way?
After all, we love trees, treating them with veneration,
ever awaiting encounters with playful dryads,
and we are sorry when their green leaves curl and crackle in the fire.
But Nature will not save us. We know this full well,
though we still find longing and memory in her.
From beyond Nature, he came to call us
to participate in the power of the same prayer.
And what does it matter, brothers and sisters, that our faith is weak,
neither moving mountains nor saving us from death,
when we have been given a sign, a vision of our true essence
in the first glimpse of the unaccomplished kingdom?
* * *
As we gather here today, separate and yet one,
so shall we commune when time and space meet their end.
Let no number pollute our hand or head,
for every particular being will find confirmation. Amen.
CONGR.:
I have risen and I am always with you. Alleluia.
You have laid your hand upon me. Alleluia.
High and wondrous is your knowledge. Alleluia. Alleluia.
You have searched me and before I open my lips
you know what word I shall utter. Alleluia.
DEACON:
Where shall I go from your spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
CONGR.:
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
DEACON:
If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
CONGR.:
Even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
DEACON:
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me become night,”
CONGR.:
Even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
DEACON:
For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
CONGR.:
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
DEACON:
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
CONGR.:
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
DEACON:
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
CONGR.:
I try to count them—they are more than the sand.
I come to the end—I am still with you.
DEACON:
The kingdom is yours for ever and ever. Alleluia.
CONGR.:
The dominion is yours from generation to generation. Alleluia.
CZESLAW MILOSZ (1911–2004) was a Polish poet, novelist, essayist, translator, and diplomat of Polish and Lithuanian descent who defected to the West in 1951. His 1953 book The Captive Mind is a classic text on totalitarianism. Milosz was professor of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of California, Berkeley, for more than thirty years. In 1980 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and was also the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the U.S. National Medal of Arts.
STANLEY BILL is a lecturer in Polish Studies at the University of Cambridge.