Welcome back to the Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Tuesday, June 30th, 2020.

And today's poem is by a Polish-American poet and translator, who was one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

He won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature, and his name is Cheswaf Milosh, a name I always have a hard time

pronouncing, but Cheswaf Milosh, I believe is how you pronounce that.

If you want to Google him to learn more, it's M-I-L-O-S-Z.

Milosh survived the World War II.

He lived in Warsaw during World War II, and then lived there for a while

after the war, and then eventually he became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

And the poem that I'm going to read today is called Ars Poetica. It goes like this. I have always

aspired to a more spacious form that would be free from the claims of poetry

or prose and would let us understand each other without exposing the author or reader to

sublime agonies.

In the very essence of poetry, there is something indecent.

A thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us, so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger

had sprung out and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

That's why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a Dimonian, though it's an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.

It's hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from, when so often they're put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.

What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons who behave as if they were at

home speak in many tongues and who not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand work at changing his

destiny for their convenience? It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today,

and so you may think that I am only joking or that I've devised

just one more means of praising art with the help of irony.

...