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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO ROBERT LOWELL by CZESLAW MILOSZ

Poet Analysis

First Line: I HAD NO RIGHT TO TALK OF YOU THAT WAY
Subject(s): LOWELL, ROBERT (1917-1977);
I had no right to talk of you that way,
Robert. An émigré's envy
Must have prompted me to mock
Your long depressions, weeks of terror,
Presumed vacations in the safety of the wards.
It was not from pride in my normalcy.
Insanity, I knew, was insinuating itself
In a thin thread into my very being
And only waited for my permission
To carry me into its murky regions.
And I was watchful. Like a lame man,
I used to walk upright to hide my affliction.
You didn't have to. For you it was permitted.
Not for me, a refugee on this continent
Where so many newcomers vanished without a trace.
Forgive me my mistake. Your will was of no use
Against an illness that held you like a stigma.
Beneath my anger was the vanity,
Unjustifiable, of the humiliated. Belatedly
I write to you across what separates us:
Gestures, conventions, idioms, illusions.


First Published in @3The Kenyon Review@1, Volume 23 #2 (Spring 2001).
www.kenyonreview.org/roth




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