Sunday, November 22, 2009

"Who serves best doesn’t always understand"

--- Czeslaw Milosz, line from the poem "Love" in the collection Rescue, quoted by A.F. Moritz in the essay "What Man Has Made of Man" in Poetry, November 2009

Quote in context

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills—
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves.
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.