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“The Sun” by Czesław Miłosz 🇵🇱🇺🇸 (30 Jun 1911 – 14 Aug 2004)
Translated from the Polish by Renata Gorczyński, Robert Hass & Robert Pinsky
All colors are made of Sun and the Sun contains them all.
So the source of color, the Sun, itself has no one color.
But the various Earth is like a single poem or picture
With Sun the emblem of the artist of the whole.
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And anyone who wants to take his brush and try
To paint the Earth must not look straight up at the Sun
Or he will lose the memory of all he’s ever seen,
With only a burning tear to fill his eye.
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Let him kneel down and press his cheek in grass and then
Look till he sees the beam the Earth reflects back upwards.
There he will find all of our lost, forgotten treasures:
Stars and Roses, the setting and the rising Sun.