In Common (1991)
by Czeslaw Milosz, translated by Anthony Milosz
What is good? Garlic. A leg of lamb on a spit.
Wine with a view of boats rocking in a cove.
A starry sky in August. A rest on a mountain peak.
What is good? After a long drive water in a pool and a sauna.
Lovemaking and falling asleep, embraced, your legs touching hers.
Mist in the morning, translucent, announcing a sunny day.
I am submerged in everything that is common to us, the living.
Experiencing this earth for them, in my flesh.
Walking past the vague outline of skyscrapers? anti-temples?
In valleys of beautiful, though poisoned, rivers.
yesterday, after a long day in the sun sweating and painting alexis’s bike barrier mural (everyone should bike along 20th st next to greenwood cemetery), a group of us went to a bar and sat outside and ate tater tots and cold drinks. we smelled really bad and were exhausted and our minds were a little loopy. we started talking about our favorite forms of fried potato, then our favorite vegetables, then all the different varieties of tomato and their weird names, and is garlic a vegetable or not. i think these kinds of conversations could theoretically go on for hours, and this is why the “lists of things that are good in the world” poem will never go out of style. we love to list things that we love, and we love to find that we have loving something in common with other people. it is a way of experiencing the world with and for each other.
xo
sam