And Yet The Books

And Yet The Books

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,

That appeared once, still wet

As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,

And touched, coddled, began to live

In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,

Tribes on the march, planets in motion.

“We are,” they said, even as their pages

were being torn out, or a buzzing flame

licked away their letters. So much more durable

than we are, whose frail warmth

cools down, with memory, disperses, perishes.

I imagine the earth when I am no more:

Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,

Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley,

Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,

Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

Czeslaw Milosz

The theme of this poem is only culture specific in that it is talking about books-therefore, the ideas apply to any culture that has a tradition of books and reading, which is the majority of modern cultures. I chose to comment on And Yet The Books because of it's relevance to what I love and because the ideas about books and other things we have produced outliving humans is fascinating to me. The words used are also beautiful, which is important to me in a poem. My favorite phrases from this poem include "dewy lilacs", "frail warmth", "a buzzing flame licked away their letters.", and "radiance, heights. Poems with phrases like these catch my eye, and after my attention has been grabbed I am able to invest in understanding the actual them of the poem. Milosz propels books to an almost holy level; they are not only derived from people, who are flawed, but also "radiance, heights." I love this idea-that books can transcend the flaws of their creators into a better standing, a form of perfection unattainable to humans. It is odd to think that the product can surpass the creator, and maybe illogical, but that is part of what makes the theme and the poem beautiful and interesting to me.