Once when I was having a difficult week that I didn’t want to talk about, a classmate once asked me how I was doing. I said that wildebeest learn to walk minutes after birth.
This is why people hate poets. And 25-year-olds. (And it was a pretentious, MFA student thing to say. I don’t talk like this now.)
No matter who’s using them, metaphors can be walls to crouch behind, stained glass that color the world, or the only tools we have to say what we mean.
As a very private person, I love writing poetry because it lets me say exactly what I mean without directly divulging anything personal.
But there’s also an argument for authenticity and the power of speaking plainly. To be bold enough to say what you really mean. Chekhov said, “The role of the writer…is to describe the truth so plainly the reader can no longer evade it.”
All this to introduce a poem that I’ve come back to many times.
My invitation for those of us who don’t often read poems: The feeling is as important (if not more important) than the process of decoding.
My favorite poems are houses and not puzzles, so live inside them before making them into escape rooms. Take your time.
Here’s poet Elisa Gonzalez reading it for you (minutes 1:28-2:50).
Gathering Apricots
Czesław Miłosz, translated from Polish by Robert Hass
In the sun, while there, below, over the bay
Only clouds of white mist wander, fleeting,
And the range of hills is grayish on the blue,
Apricots, the whole tree full of them, in the dark leaves,
Glimmer, yellow and red, bringing to mind
The garden of Hesperides and apples of Paradise.
I reach for a fruit and suddenly feel the presence
And put aside the basket and say: “It’s a pity
That you died and cannot see these apricots,
While I celebrate this undeserved life.”
COMMENTARY
Alas, I did not say what I should have.
I submitted fog and chaos to a distillation.
That other kingdom of being or non-being
Is always with me and makes itself heard
With thousands of calls, screams, complaints,
And she, the one to whom I turned,
Is perhaps a leader of a chorus.
What happens only once does not stay in words.
Countries disappeared and towns and circumstances.
Nobody will be able to see her face.
And form itself is always a betrayal.
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(I left white space to encourage you, because I know the digital world is fast-paced and overstimulating, to slow down, go back, reread, and create a moment to live inside a poem.)
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Maybe let your eyes flit back to certain spots.
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Ok, let’s talk about the first section.
What I notice:
Many commas and long sentences - it’s easy to get lost, and there isn’t clear direction.
“In,” “over,” “below” - it takes awhile to settle on a place
Words like “grayish on the blue,” “clouds of white mist wander,” and “dark leaves”
The words evoke a feeling of mystery, like going for a walk at twilight after a rainy day.
If you say them out loud, some of the words whisper together.
There’s also a sense of obscurity - the white mist would keep us from seeing what’s below it. If the leaves are dark, they’re hard to distinguish between.
We don’t have any action until the fifth line (and even then, it’s just apricots glimmering), and the pace is slow.
Why are their random Greek myths no one knows about?
The first stanza is hazy, wondrous scenes of nature — words like “wander” and “glimmer” set a fanciful and mystical scene.
Vagueness and obscurity is everywhere, from the in-between time of twilight to mist, which makes it difficult to see. The leaves are dark, the hills are grayish blue. We can’t see what’s beneath the haze and leaves.
To me, this first section feels like the most pastoral and loveliest description of depression ever — unmoored and disoriented in a beautiful world. Grief rambles and floats like a walk in the woods until we land on the speaker’s survivor’s guilt.
The symbol of setting aside the apricots because the dead cannot enjoy them is powerful, but soft and comes at the end. The speaker’s survivor’s guilt is lightened to “It’s a pity…”
However, this is only one side of the speaker’s grief. While now they only sigh and stop eating a certain kind of Greecian fruit, a quiet, dim, lingering sadness that dampens certain moments, we’ll soon uncover the raw, violent, chaotic, blunt grief in the commentary. Here it is again:
COMMENTARY
Alas, I did not say what I should have.
I submitted fog and chaos to a distillation.
That other kingdom of being or non-being
Is always with me and makes itself heard
With thousands of calls, screams, complaints,
And she, the one to whom I turned,
Is perhaps a leader of a chorus.
What happens only once does not stay in words.
Countries disappeared and towns and circumstances.
Nobody will be able to see her face.
And form itself is always a betrayal.
What I notice:
The speaker’s regret
How different this is from the first section. We have:
Short sentences: The pace is faster, the writing’s more immediate
No natural description
The action starts right away (“I did not say”)
Death is referenced in the third line as opposed to at the end.
The loudness of this world, as the speaker is haunted by “thousands of calls, screams, complaints”
“Is alway with me” “is always a betrayal”: There’s no escaping this.
The guilt and regret in “betrayal,” especially coming after “I did not say what I should have” and “Nobody will be able to see her face.” He feels helpless in his inability to do right by the dead
Not only is he alive when people he loved died - his attempt to express his grief isn’t good enough and has to be redone. Even after writing this, he admits that no matter what he does, “Nobody will be able to see her face.” For how powerful writing is, it can’t bring dead people back the same way they were when they were alive.
The fog and twilight that seemed so lovely in the first section were also obscuring a more haunting truth.
Contrary to the “It’s a pity” grief of quiet mist and a fruit basket, he admits death is “always with me and makes itself heard.” Instead of seeing it in the distance as soft hills and trees, he is haunted by “thousands of calls, screams, complaints…”
Some biographical context: Miłosz lived in Poland as the Germans took over, lived in a prisoner transit camp. A nun rescued him, he left Warsaw in 1944 at age 33 for a safer village while the city burned. In 1945, he became a cultural attache for Poland, and his mother also died that year. He left for France in 1951 and was offered a teaching position at UC Berkeley in 1960.
“Countries disappeared and towns and circumstances.” Entire places, lives, and possible futures ended again and again.
This poem was written three years after the 1987 death of his wife, who had been with him since before Warsaw, a constant during destruction, war, death, and upheaval.
In the commentary, we feel pain, helplessness, and guilt without embellishment or philosophy — no natural imagery, no winding, six-line sentence. One sentence per line — choppy and halting, the way grief stops everything. Because “form itself is always a betrayal.”
But I don’t think the commentary negates the first part of “Gathering Apricots.” There are many sides to trauma and grief, and we can write about it as though we’re looking at it through a telescope or we’re drowning in it. Maybe it’s helpful to have both ways. Maybe one way helps you create a bridge to the other.