The two poems placed here together contradict each other. <a
href="/ipa/milosz/mil1.html">The first</a> renounces any dealing with
problems which for centuries have been tormenting the minds of
theologians and philosophers; it chooses a moment and the beauty of the 
earth as observed on one of the Caribbean islands. <a 
href="/ipa/milosz/mil2.html">The second</a>, just the opposite, voices
anger because people do not want to remember, and live as if nothing
happened, as if horror were not hiding just beneath the surface of 
their social arrangements.
<p>

I alone know that the assent to the world in the first poem masks much 
bitterness and that its serenity is perhaps more ironic than it seems. And 
the disagreement with the world in the second results from anger which is a 
stronger stimulus than an invitation to a philosophical dispute. But let it 
be, the two poems taken together testify to my contradictions, since the 
opinions voiced in one and the other are equally mine.